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May 29, 2016
Tekken 7: The King of the Iron First will be a promotional tour for Tekken that will be making it's way through the competitive scene during 2016. The tournament will take place across North America with a variety of events opening up to allow players to participate.
There will be a number of events where any player can turn up to take part and the events will take place throughout the rest of the year until November 6. The list of areas supporting events can be seen below. If you'd like to see event locations and dates you should visit the Bandai Namco website.
+ Portland, OR
+ Atlana, GA
+ St. Louis, MO
+ Des Moines, WA
+ Minneapolis, MN
+ Chicago, IL
+ Philadelphia, PA
+ Sacramento, CA
+ Richmond, VA
+ Austin, TX
+ Southern California
+ Toronto, Canada
+ Pittsburgh, PA
Some locations, such as Chicago, will have multiple events. All events will have a $3,000 price pool, whilst the
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May 08, 2016
In a surprise move, British soccer team West Ham United has picked up an eSports player to add to their player roster. It may be unheard of, but we expect this kind of thing may be happening a lot more in the near future.
The player fittingly has competitive experience in the FIFA franchise and after seeing the player's talent, West Ham United went ahead and brought him under their wing. The player, who is known as Sean 'Dragonn' Allen is now a part of the West Ham family and will even have a West Ham jersey to wear at offline FIFA events. The jersey features the number 50 and his own username. In the recent FIFA 2016 Interactive World Cup, Dragonn came in second place. Despite failing to reach the first place spot, Dragonn was inches away from securing a victory.
After a superbly close 5-5 draw against Mohamad Al-Bacha from Denmark, Dragonn lost on Away goals in the New York finals.
West Ham United aren't the first soccer team to move into the world of eSports. In
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May 04, 2016
Overwatch may just be the next biggest thing in eSports. Recently an eSports event covering an Overwatch game that featured some familiar names made it's way to the front page of Twitch.
Pulling in over 18,000 viewers at peak, the Overkill tournament had a $5,000 prize pool on the line and it saw competitive teams battle it out in the Overwatch beta. Since then, the beta for Overwatch has ended but it was certainly a spectacular way for Blizzard to end the whole event.
During the 18,000 viewer peak, Cloud 9 and Reunited.gg played against each other in a huge, marathon-like best of nine series. In the series, Cloud 9 managed to come out on top with an impressive 5-3 score line. Despite winning two more games than Reunited.gg, the match was still a lot closer than you'd have expected and it really showed the eSports potential, both for competitive play and for the viewing experience.
In fact, one map saw Cloud 9 get 99/100 percent for the capture on LiJiang Tower before
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April 27, 2016
Recently the HCS Pro League Invitational took place and two of the top Halo teams made it into the grand finals. Only one team could take a spot for the HCS Pro League, whilst the other team would be sent back home.
Read on to find out how the final match for the Pro League Invitational went ahead between Evil Geniuses and Team EnVyUs below. Keep in mind that this article is filled with spoilers so if you'd like to watch the match yourself, you can do so on the Halo Twitch channel under the past broadcasts section.
Things started promisingly on Team EnVyUs' side for the first game as they took a 3-0 victory against Evil Geniuses on Coliseum. Game mode was Capture the Flag and EnVyUs completely shut down their opponent's hopes at getting a single flag.
For all those watching for the action at home, Evil Geniuses put the ball in our court by taking the second game, albeit in a fairly close fashion. Lunchbox managed to pull out a decent 18-7 K/D in their second game, which
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April 25, 2016
Details on two new operators dropped during the recent ESL Pro League for Rainbow Six. The two new operators will be part of a new faction. Which, unsurprisingly will be representative of the Navy SEALS. Even though the addition of the SEALS faction was expected, we're pretty excited to see them make it into the game, because let's be honest the Navy SEALS have always been pretty awesome, especially in Rainbow Six.
We'll be getting a defender and an attacker for the new Navy SEAL team, and in similar fashion to the previous Black Ice DLC release, one of which will be a male character whilst the other will be a female character. The first character for the upcoming DLC is named Valkyrie - she will be the defender and will have a range of extra surveillance systems at her disposal. On the other side of the field Blackbeard has been introduced as an attacker who will have access to a rifle with a deployable shield weapon attachment.
Unfortunately we haven't received much more
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April 22, 2016
I've always thought that Rocket League looked like an absolutely solid title but after a bit more of a look at the latest update, it turns out that the game does actually have room to get even better. Instead of just adding new cosmetic items or a new arena, the next Rocket League patch will add new gameplay content that could add hundreds of hours of new fun and completely change the direction of future eSports events.
The biggest new addition is the new game mode named Hoops. As the name suggests, Hoops is a basketball inspired mode. The new game mode will feature a 2 v 2 setup on a new arena called Dunk House. To get players in the spirit, NBA flags will be added as cosmetic items in the new update too. The new flags can be purchased, although the NBA logo will be given out for free.
To begin with the Hoops mode will be limited to unranked but a ranked playlist could be possible in the future. So far Psyonix is yet to confirm the future of Hoops, we'll have to see how well
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April 16, 2016
The next Street Fighter update will be adding some new content for Street Fighter V and it will be paving the way for the next DLC character, which we all know will be Guile. For a while, however, the exact landing date for Guile hasn't been known. So when exactly can we expect to see Guile in Street Fighter V and how will he work as a DLC piece?
Guile has been around for a long, long time so it's definitely pleasing some fans (and potentially frustrating others) to see him make a return in Street Fighter V. Not only has Guile made a name for himself in the main Street Fighter story arc, but he's been in plenty of other crossover titles too, including Marvel x Capcom and Street Fighter x Tekken. So Guile was previously announced as DLC but fortunately he will be available for free to all players until the Zenny shop opens, at which point we're guessing players will have to pay points for him.
Guile will have his own Character Story and set of trials too and to sweeten the
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April 13, 2016
If you didn't want to pay upfront for Paragon there wasn't much of a chance you would have been able to get into the recent closed beta. The Epic Games team has planned an open beta for all players, however, and it looks as if we're finally getting details on exactly when the open beta will pan out.
The upcoming open beta will start on April 28 and will run until May 1. This upcoming four day Paragon weekend will be the first phase for the open beta, whilst a second phase will spark up open beta play a week later and will continue till May 8. Servers will open up on both April 28 and May 5 at 9AM Pacific Time.
If you already signed up for beta access in the past, chances are that you should be able to play during the first phase, although it's not absolutely guaranteed. Epic Games mentioned in their press release that, The first stress test will include invites for the first 500,000 people who signed up for the beta only.
If you haven't signed up yet, you still can
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April 10, 2016
Season 3 for the Mortal Kombat X Pro League has now been announced and it will feature 16 players from across the world. This time round, players from Latin America will get their first chance to qualify for the top 16 spots, whilst other regions will include CIS, Europe and North America.
In the previous two seasons, SonicFox managed to take the trophies but this time there is even more on the line and more chances for up and coming talent to get in on the action. After the qualifiers, the 16 man tournament will be held in Burbank, California and players will be fighting for a $200,000 first place prize, twice that of the previous season. Altogether, $500,000 has been put on the line in season 3 and the other $300,000 will be awarded to runner up players.
Absolutely anybody can sign up for the Challenger Cup and by doing so they'll be able to get the chance to fight their way into the qualifiers. ESL has also confirmed that a later season will be coming for Mortal Kombat
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April 07, 2016
Could you imagine eSports being played alongside the Olympics? It seems like a far-fetched idea that couldn't possibly ever make it's way into reality, but recently the British government backed an international committee that has been designed to bring eGames to the world, an event that will be treated similarly to the olympics.
The first eGames event will be held this year in Rio De Janeiro alongside the 2016 Summer Olympics. Following on from that, future Olympics events will have coinciding eGames events too.
Like the Olympics, there will be no cash prizes given out for players - instead, bronze, silver and gold medals will be awarded. The first event will have players from Brazil, Britain, Canada and the U.S.A but future events are planned to host more countries.
So far, besides the medals there are no other incentives to attend the eGames events, so it's going to be hard to get a busy team like OpTic From COD/Halo or Fnatic from Counter Strike/League of Legends