News

Counter-Strike MIBR versus MAD Lions in Flashpoint’s Season 1 grand final breakdown By M Alzamora League of Legends Match predictions for Cloud9 versus FlyQuest in 2020 LCS Spring finals By William Davis Dota 2 OG vs. Vikin.gg ESL One Los Angeles lower bracket match prediction By Steven Rondina

News

Riot paying hackers $100,000 to find ways to cheat in Valorant Olivia Richman Riot will be rewarding anyone who finds vulnerabilities in Valorant’s anti-cheat software, Vanguard. For the past six years, the League of Legends developer has been running a Bug Bounty program on HackerOne, where they’ve paid out over $2 million in bounties to players who find bugs, glitches, and anything else that undermines the security and privacy of players. Payouts were awarded based on the severity of the breach, with a …

League of Legends

FlyQuest’s Santorin says beating EG “feels like another day of scrims” Olivia Richman Given how FlyQuest played today, fans will likely be surprised to know Lucas “Santorin” Kilmer Larsen was under the weather. Despite that, his team dominated Evil Geniuses in the 2020 LCS Spring Split semifinals, setting them up with a trip to the finals to face Cloud9.  WIN.gg spoke with Santorin after the 3-1 victory, discussing their chances tomorrow, how they think they’d fair against other regions at MSI, and even …

Counter-Strike

Valve reveals ESL One Rio Major’s Regional Major Rankings M Alzamora Valve has released its initial rankings for the build to the ESL One Rio Major. In March, Valve revealed that teams will be required to requalify for 2020’s only CSGO Major, citing the length of time between the StarLadder Berlin Major in September 2019 and ESL One Rio, which comes in November. Fans and teams now know exactly how it works, thanks to a blog post from the developer. The …

Counter-Strike

New CSGO major rules spell trouble for Astralis’ six-man roster M Alzamora Contained in a blog post delving into the specifics of the new Regional Major Rankings system, Valve detailed several rule changes that could have a major impact on Astralis. When the Danish team announced it would switch to a six-man roster in March by adding Patrick “es3tag” Hansen, it whipped up controversy over the impact this had on a business deal between Heroic and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive newcomer FunPlus Phoenix. …

Fortnite Ninja flexes his Mixer money at haters harassing him in Fortnite By Olivia Richman News EternaLEnVy’s Cloud9 breaks brutal losing streak at BTS Pro Series By Steven Rondina Dota 2 Vikin.gg scores big upset over Team Secret at ESL One Los Angeles By Nina Forneloza

Dota 2

Nigma picks hard support Sniper, gets eliminated from ESL One LA Nina Forneloza Chicken Fighters wound up defeating Team Nigma in ESL One Los Angeles’ Europe and CIS league, thanks in part to a failed support Sniper draft in game two. Chicken Fighters and Team Nigma were pitted against each other in a do-or-die lower bracket series. Kuro “KuroKy” Salehi Takhasomi’s team kicked things off with a convincing win against Chicken Fighters. Chicken Fighters evened the field when Nigma tried to experiment with …

Counter-Strike

ESL Pro League stats show that taco really likes killing chickens M Alzamora Counter-Strike fans are obsessed with statistics. From a player’s headshot percentage to their open duel win rate, fans consistantly find new ways to rate Counter-Strike: Global Offensive’s pro players. But one startup has found way to calculate some truly weird statistics. Scope.gg posted a number of out-there statistics on its official Twitter account, making us wunder just what else is out there. In one of the most surprising of the …

News

CSGO pro wrongfully banned from Valorant after plugging phone into PC Olivia Richman Counter-Strike: Global Offensive pro Oscar “Mixwell” Cañellas was wrongfully kicked out of Valorant for plugging his phone into his PC.  That seemingly innocent action got Mixwell immediately blocked from Riot’s new FPS title. Mixwell had just won a round when he went to charge his phone by connecting it to his phone. Apparently, the game’s anti-cheat system interpreted the new device as Mixwell attempting to do something sneaky and banned …

Counter-Strike

CSGO’s player count just passed Dota 2’s all-time peak Steven Rondina Counter-Strike: Global Offensive’s player count has been on a steady climb for months now and has hit yet another big milestone. On April 17, CSGO’s concurrent player count reached a whopping 1,298,888. That doesn’t just set a new benchmark for CSGO, it also eclipses the all-time high of Dota 2. The two Valve-made esports titles have long had something of a rivalry, and have inhabited the number-one and number-two spots …

Vertigo changes, M4A1-S buff part of huge CSGO meta shift M Alzamora Counter-Strike Between the SG-553 nerf that hammered the rifle’s viability and the surprise overhaul of Vertigo, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive’s developers have done something they rarely do. In two patches, the developers have signaled that they believe the attacking side is too powerful in today’s meta, and they’re going to do something to fix it. Several changes suggest that a CT-friendly meta is on the horizon. Over the past nine months, Counter-Strike’s …

Valve wants to shorten Dota 2 game lengths with update 7.26 Steven Rondina Dota 2 Dota 2 update 7.26 has arrived, and it’s a very strange one. While actual version changes typically consist of a slew of sweeping changes to the game including changes to heroes, items, and buildings, the 7.26 update is exclusively composed of core gameplay changes. The full patch notes are short enough to be included here: Attributes no longer provide Magic Resistance, Spell Amplification, and Movement Speed for Strength, Intelligence and …

Cloud9’s Blaber takes home 2020 LCS Spring Split MVP award William Davis League of Legends Cloud9’s jungler Robert “Blaber” Huang is the 2020 LCS Spring Split MVP. Cloud9 collected its final award of the season. Cloud9 claimed all the spots in the All-Pro Team and the Coach of the Split award. The jungler is receiving the most important award of the split in his first as a starter. This is confirmation that Blaber is, in fact, LCS material. In the offseason, Cloud9 and Blaber received …

Dafran refuses to return to Overwatch, bans goading stream viewers Olivia Richman News Overwatch fans are already feeling the pressure of Riot’s new FPS, Valorant. Former Overwatch League pro Daniel “Dafran” Francesca recently banned a viewer when they wouldn’t stop bashing Valorant and demanding that he play Overwatch instead. Dafran was playing Sova, an agent similar to Overwatch’s Hanzo. This was a smart pick for the Twitch streamer, who was known for his DPS skills on the Blizzard Arena stage. But instead of …

Valorant developers say Split ropes are fine as players complain Olivia Richman News Ranked mode is coming to Valorant and closed beta participants are panicking about the game’s potential exploits.  One of the most recent movement tricks in the game is the use of ropes on Split. There are a few ropes throughout the map that players can hook onto in order to reach high ground more rapidly. While attached to the ropes, players found out they could still fire their weapons. Because …

Here’s everything you can do in CSGO’s in-game watch tab M Alzamora Counter-Strike With Counter-Strike: Global Offensive adding online tournaments to the watch tab today, it’s a good time to go through exactly what players can and can’t do with CSGO’s powerful GOTV browser. CSGO boasts some serious integration between the game and outside tournaments, and today it got a little bit closer to being the complete CSGO viewing package. In a surprise reveal, Counter-Strike developer Valve announced on the game’s official Twitter …

CSGO teams being sued for “negligence” after former pro passes away Olivia Richman Counter-Strike Team Reapers and Imperial Esports are being sued by the family of Matheus “bruttJ” Queiroz, a former Counter-Strike: Global Offensive pro who passed away in December 2019 at 19 years old.  Imperial Esports had announced the sad news at the end of last year, citing “health complications” in the tweet. bruttJ had taken a 10-day hiatus from professional CSGO before his untimely death. During that time he was suffering from …

FunPlus Phoenix World Championship skins are getting mixed reviews William Davis League of Legends Riot Games revealed the World Championship skins for FunPlus Phoenix and the community is not fully sold on the concept. FunPlus Phoenix took the 2019 World Championship by storm, becoming the third Chinese team to win the event. There were a lot of discussions about which champion the players would pick for their custom in-game skins. It went as follows: Kim “GimGoon” Han-saem, Gangplank Gao “Tian” Tian-Liang, Lee Sin Kim …

Virtus.pro, Team Secret go undefeated in ESL One LA group stage Nina Forneloza Dota 2 Virtus.pro and Team Secret have ended the ESL One Los Angeles Europe and CIS league’s group stage with perfect 7-0 records. Virtus.pro is peaking right now. After several roster shakeups and underwhelming tournament results, the Russian team is finally bringing its A-game. The team was grouped with back-to-back The International champions OG and Kuro “KuroKy” Salehi Takhasomi’s Team Nigma. Despite that stiff competition, Virtus.pro posted an impressive 7-0 score in …

New CSGO update changes Vertigo, makes it easier to copy crosshairs Steven Rondina Counter-Strike Big updates just keep arriving in Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. Less than a week after Valve delivered a major shakeup of the CSGO arsenal, which included the long-awaited nerf of the Krieg, the publisher has shipped another update that includes various map changes, upgrades to spectating, and a new experimental warmup game mode.  While map changes are usually the centerpiece of big patches like this, the so-called “Change Your Tune” update …

CDEC’s Xm is the first Chinese Dota 2 player to reach 10,000 MMR Nina Forneloza Dota 2 Guo ‘Xm’ Hongcheng has become the first Chinese player to reach the highly coveted 10,000 MMR ranking. Indeed, the 10k MMR club is growing bigger and bigger. China recorded its first Chinese member of the 10k MMR club as Xm joined the elite list of players with five-digit MMR. ???? Congratulations to CDEC.Xm on reaching 10K MMR!#StarLadder #Dota2 pic.twitter.com/hAbc6ZkaMK — StarLadder Dota 2 (@StarLadderDota2) April 14, 2020 Malaysian player Cheng …

Valve trolls CSGO players with Office changes and Inferno wall bangs M Alzamora Counter-Strike Since the release of Counter-Strike: Global Offensive’s Shattered Web operation in November, there has been a steady stream of hints that all seemed to point in one direction – the return of the  Office to competitve CSGO. While the map has been available to CSGO players for years, it has never seen competitive play on an esports stage. CSGO’s most recent patch moved the mystery forward slightly when developers included …

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