News

Dota 2 Diretide increases Dota 2 player count for first time in months By Steven Rondina News Riot brings back Valorant patch 1.11 and Skye after new fixes By Olivia Richman League of Legends Riot is looking to move Seraphine from support to mid lane By William Davis

Counter-Strike

G2 NiKo puts up a big performance for his new team vs Astralis M Alzamora G2’s Nikola “NiKo” Kovač put up a mighty effort today in G2’s match against Astralis on Dust 2, breaking a 2.0 rating over the course of the map. One of the world’s best players was everywhere on the classic map, putting up a monstrous 2.08 rating and an average damage per round of 135.1. He simply couldn’t be stopped, and plays like these showed why he’s one of the world’s …

League of Legends

Tyler1 speaks out about Pokimane’s $5 donation cap on Twitch Olivia Richman T1 streamer Tyler “Tyler1” Steinkamp had a response to another streamer. And for once, it was to voice his agreement instead of cause drama.  Imane “Pokimane” Anys recently limited her Twitch donations to a $5 maximum. While she didn’t say exactly why, Pokimane has been criticized in the past for accepting donations from male viewers who send large amounts of money despite potentially having financial problems. This has led some …

Counter-Strike

Is Valorant killing CSGO? It’s a fight between Riot and Valve M Alzamora Many pro players and some teams have recently spoken to the possibility that Riot Games’ new tactical first-person shooter Valorant could soon overtake Counter-Strike: Global Offensive in popularity. But how is that happening, and is there anything that CSGO developer Valve can do about it? In terms of professional talent, Valorant has seemingly taken the most from CSGO teams. The game has sometimes struggled to develop its new talent, with …

Counter-Strike

Watch Astralis’ dev1ce get killed by a smoke grenade versus MIBR M Alzamora An unlucky grenade toss led to Astralis’ Nicolai “dev1ce” Reedtz’s shocking demise on Vertigo. BLAST Premier’s matchup between Astralis and MIBR didn’t go exactly as planned for the Danish team at first. MIBR, with a completely fresh roster and seemingly little hope of even taking a map off Astralis, surprised everyone by taking the series to the full three maps. Although Astralis eventually took the match on the decider Inferno, …

League of Legends All you need to know to prepare for League of Legends Season 11 By William Davis League of Legends Excel Esports parts ways with Caedrel before LoL 2021 shuffle By William Davis League of Legends T1, Faker to appear on BTS’s new variety show Run BTS By William Davis

League of Legends

LPL coverage saw a big increase in the 2020 LPL Summer Split William Davis The best Chinese League of Legends league, the LPL, has grown a lot over the course of 2020 with many new international fans tuning in. Having a total of 16 teams in the LPL has made it the most competitive league in 2020. The Chinese teams have managed to pick up the Worlds trophy two years in a row but were recently stopped by Korea’s DAMWON Gaming in the 2020 …

League of Legends

Is Aphelios good in the top lane? How to play Aphelios top William Davis Aphelios is starting to pop up in the top lane after being thrown out of the bottom lane meta a few patches ago.  Aphelios entered League of Legends in December 2019 and quickly took over in the bot lane as one of the strongest picks. Riot had trouble balancing the complex marksman and ultimately ended up gutting him this year after months of dominance in both solo queue and professional …

Counter-Strike

CSPPA announces player committee to work on world ranking rules M Alzamora The Counter-Strike Professional Players Association has announced a player committee dedicated to working on refining the rules that dictate its own world rankings. In a Counter-Strike: Global Offensive world where there exist several different sets of world rankings that claim to be definitive, the one organization that should be focusing on player health and well-being wants in on the ranking game too. A one-page press release distributed on November 2 …

News

Did Effort just leak LS and Polt joining T1 as coaches? William Davis A big offseason leak might have happened recently live on T1 support Lee “Effort” Sang-ho’s stream.  T1 recently released coach Lim “Comet” Hye-sung as well as head of strategy and analytics Gary “Tolki” Mialaret, and will now be looking for new additions to the coaching staff for the upcoming season. Some of the new additions might already be leaked after Effort shared a private discord chat by accident on stream.  …

DrLupo denies that his Twitch community is toxic and racist Olivia Richman News Twitch streamer Benjamin “DrLupo” Lupo’s community is under attack again for being considered toxic.  With over 4.3 million followers, DrLupo continues to be a popular personality on the Twitch streaming platform. Recently, he’s been playing Escape From Tarkov while chatting with around 14,000 concurrent viewers. But with a growing fanbase comes some people that may not be considered savory. Recently, DrLupo’s community has been accused of being racist.  While it’s …

These are the best builds for new LoL champion Seraphine William Davis League of Legends The newest champion in League of Legends Seraphine has taken to the stage and is ready to dominate on Summoner’s Rift. Seraphine is a real pop star with a rhythmic and deadly kit. She is a mage support and can also be played as a solo laner in mid. So far, Seraphine has been picked the most as a support in Platinum rank and above, with a total of 87,000 …

Pokimane has limited donation amounts for her fans on Twitch Olivia Richman News Imane “Pokimane” Anys is in the spotlight again, but this time it’s not over something controversial.  Ever since Pokimane has come back from her month-long break, she’s been ridiculed by some for possibly lying about having a boyfriend and for making insensitive jokes. But through it all, Pokimane continued to gain subscribers by playing Among Us with other big-name streamers on Twitch.  Now, Pokimane is in the headlines again. But …

Team Liquid and TF Blade split up for mysterious reasons William Davis League of Legends Team Liquid has parted ways with streamer Ashkan “TF Blade” Homayouni, the organization announced on Twitter. TF Blade started as a streamer, but became a substitute player for Team Liquid Academy and the LCS main roster. The team supported his ambition to reach rank one in every server and helped him do so with various bootcamps. Today we are parting ways with @tfblade. Ashkan has been integral in the TL …

Sneaky shows a lot in Halloween cosplay of Azur Lane Casablanca Olivia Richman League of Legends “Happy Halloween!” So how does the League of Legends community celebrate this spooky holiday? With another cosplay from Zach “Sneaky” Scuderi, of course! The former League of Legends pro dropped an adorable game-related cosplay on Halloween for all of his fans.  Happy Halloween! Azur Lane Casablanca????: Lynn???? @squarenoodles pic.twitter.com/hkS02l3GAT — Zach Scuderi (@Sneaky) October 31, 2020 The cosplay was based on Casablanca from the Chinese mobile game Azur Lane. The …

Riot Games reveals list of franchises for 2021 LCK season William Davis League of Legends Riot Games has revealed the final list of franchises that will compete in the 2021 LCK season and beyond. After a long process, Riot Games has selected 10 organizations that will be part of the LCK next year. The selected teams are: DAMWON Gaming DRX Afreeca Freecs Gen.G T1 KT Rolster SANDBOX Gaming Team Dynamics Hanwha Life Esports hyFresh Blade Nine out of the 10 teams selected were part of …

Vitality’s Nivera substitution leads to BLAST Premier win M Alzamora Counter-Strike Team Vitality won a close match against BIG with the most effective substitution fans have seen so far in pro Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. Map substitutions are the newest addition to tournament level CSGO, with organizers starting to allow teams to substitute players in between maps for the first time in the game’s esports history. In Vitality’s close series against BIG at BLAST Premier, it seems to have made a huge …

The best champions to climb with before ranked season 10 ends William Davis League of Legends The ranked season is coming to an end, so it’s time to put in the last effort in solo queue to hopefully climb a few last ranks before the preseason kicks in. But what are the best champions to climb with in this final sprint? The current state of solo queue is pretty diverse and there are a lot of viable options for every role. The season 10 meta seems …

Team Liquid wins first event since 2018 at ESL One Germany Steven Rondina Dota 2 The current Team Liquid roster pulled off its greatest tournament victory ever. Liquid has won ESL One Germany, defeating Natus Vincere in 3-1 fashion. This is the biggest win for the tight-knit team and their biggest paycheck since forming in 2017. The series initially looked ready to close in potentially record-breaking fashion. Liquid secured dominant, 30-minute victories in the first two games of the finals. Both maps saw Liquid get …

Here’s how to make a new jump throw bind in CSGO M Alzamora Counter-Strike Counter-Strike: Global Offensive’s best smokes are often the hardest ones to throw, but a jump throw bind makes them much easier. Jumpthrow binds are probably the most complicated bind to make in CSGO, but a few additions to a player’s autoexec.cfg file make them that much easier. The problem is that jumpthrows aren’t just one command. They use several commands grouped together under what CSGO’s engine calls an alias. Unfortunately, …

Worlds 2020 Finals had 2nd-highest viewership in esports history William Davis League of Legends The 2020 League of Legends World Championship ended with a bang in the final between DAMWON Gaming and Suning. Millions of viewers tuned in to watch DAMWON win the Summoner’s Cup, the first time for a Korean team since 2017. The final was decided in four games, with the series hitting a peak viewership of 3.88 million viewers, excluding Chinese platforms per Esports Charts. 3.88M Peak Viewers on #Worlds2020 Grand …

Only 8 Worlds 2020 Pick’em players had perfect scores Olivia Richman League of Legends Part of the fun of the League of Legends World Championship is predicting the matches.  After DAMWON defeated Suning in the finals to become the champions, eight Pick’em participants had perfect scores at the end of thee event. That means all eight of those viewers predicted the end result of all four main event groups and notched perfect brackets during the knockout stage.  Those eight viewers will receive an Alienware …

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