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January 14, 2017
Twitch might have a near-monopoly on the video game streaming industry, but other competitors are still fighting hard to get a grip on it.
One of the longest running competitors for video game streaming is Hitbox - it's a service that offers a similar service to Twitch, and also has a larger focus on streaming esports. In recent news, Azubu has just acquired Hitbox for a sum of "tens of millions of dollars."
While operation at Hitbox is still going on as normal, this acquisition could mean big things for the platform and even bigger things for the video game streaming industry as a whole. To begin with, Azubu is certainly interested in putting more focus on the esports side of things. The majority of streams on Twitch are non-esports related, so Hitbox and Azubu have a potential void to fill.
Interestingly, Azubu is another streaming platform that hasn't managed to gain the attention it's hoped for. Previous talks suggested that Azubu was close to shutting down due
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December 07, 2016
The Capcom Cup 2016 Finals have come to an end and we the grand final results have come in!
If you don't want to be hit with spoilers, make sure to come back to this page after checking out the Capcom Cup previous broadcasts over on Twitch.
Unsurprisingly, the majority of the top 8 players in the Capcom Pro Tour Finals were from Japan. While 6 Japan players made it to the top 8, a surprising American duo managed to make it into the finals as well. In fact, one of those USA players went on to finish in first place at the grand finals.
That player is Team Liquid's NuckleDu, who in the past year, has had not much success with getting a first place finish in an international event. With NuckleDu's great performances with Guile and R.Mika, we're happy to say he definitely deserved the win.
In second place was the second USA player, which was Evil Geniuses' Ricki Ortiz, who has always specialized with her Chun-Li playstyle. Despite the international stage, this was
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September 14, 2016
Finally, we have some great news about competitive Destiny.
After what felt like a lifetime, Activision teamed up with MLG to showcase an MLG event, which was streamed live on the Twitch platform. Because competitive Destiny hadn't been around until now, the MLG event saw 12 of the best PVP players team up and fight against each other. The teams were split as follows:
Alpha Team:
Luminosity
Bodies
Viole
SirDimetrious
TripleWRECK
SayWallaHBruhBravo Team:
nKuch
Lil Sonic
iFrostBolt
KJHovey
TrueVanguard
RealKraftyyAfter the MLG event, which was shown as a best of five match, Bungie announced that private match functionality will be coming to Destiny. The new private match feature should be live this week and it will allow players to set up competitive PVP leagues, cups and more. The private PVP functionality will also allow friends to gather up together for a bit of fun outside
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July 05, 2016
A new eSports streaming platform like Twitch has been announced by two Counter Strike veterans that could potentially change the way we all watch eSports matches online. Traditionally, eSports fans will need to visit Twitch to watch a game live, but with the new platform, named Znipe, fans may have the option to watch an eSports match the way they'd like to.
With Znipe, viewers are given the option to view multiple stream sources at once. However, these multiple sources will usually come from one match.
Take this as an example - viewers on Znipe will be able to set up their own personal overlay, which could include a few POV streams of their favorite players, a stream that shows the view the commentators are seeing and additional widgets for the map or the radar. With this amount of control, players will be able to have their own interactive viewing experience. To really work, Znipe will need the support of tournament hosts to set up multiple streams and POVs for the viewers
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June 09, 2016
The EA Play event will take the place of EA's usual booth at E3 this year. At the event, visitors will get the chance to play a number of upcoming games for free. All of the games on the list are pretty exciting upcoming titles so there's a lot to get hyped up for.
Even if you can't make it down to the EA Play Event yourself, there’s no doubt that a lot of juicy information will come from EA's booth and will make its way onto the internet. We're talking gameplay from Battlefield 1, NHL 17, NFL 17, FIFA 17 and even Titanfall 2.
All of the sports games are yearly releases so there's nothing too exciting there, although we are interested to see what changes will be made and what new content will be added this year round. Battlefield 1 is definitely exciting to see - we can't wait to see some gameplay. Titanfall 2 is perhaps the wild card here - we haven't yet seen any promotional material for the game and it is set for release later in 2016.
It'll be interesting to see
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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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March 29, 2016
Recently the Destiny team has planned to host another Twitch livestream to talk about the upcoming April update for their game. The new update planned for release at some point later in the month will feature a number of changes to the Crucible as well as some tweaks to the sandbox elements of the game.
Apparently the new update will include changes "both large and small." To top everything off, the April update will also include some weapon changes. If you've followed the development of Destiny then you'll know that weapon balance changes have become pretty commonplace.
Interestingly, Bungie wrote something that sparked a bit of curiosity in us in their even post for the upcoming Twitch livestream. Bungie wrote, "We might even find some ways to prove some new design theories in magical, delicious combat." Sounds intriguing. We're looking forward to finding exactly what Bungie means by this.
Like previous livestreams, it's likely that it will last for around an hour
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March 13, 2016
A brand new Xbox One update has launched and it brings a number of changes, some of which were seen in the Preview Program that received an update earlier in the month. The update coincides with a Windows 10 Xbox update, both of which have some interesting improvements.
Firstly, a change has been made to party chat - the limit for players in a chat is now 16. Previously the player count for a party chat was 12. Party Chat originally launched with just 8 player support and it has grown since, mostly because it has been one of the most popularly used features. Xbox One engineer Mike Ybarra says that 64 player party chat may one day be a possibility. We'd hope that with that, we'd have some sort of channel sorting system so that party chat could be used as a voice server like Teamspeak 3 - players would be able to join different channels to avoid overspeaking other players who may be playing a different game. On top of the increased player amount, Xbox One owners will now be able to
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November 19, 2014
Assassin's Creed is now very close to launching, and Ubisoft have been revealing all there is about the game leading up to it's launch. Over the weekend, Ubisoft hosted a stream to showcase a whole ton of Assassin's Creed Unity gameplay, and there was a lot to take in from this event.
The livestream event that was hosted on Twitch was hosted for around 9 hours, and within this stream, a good chunk of that time was spent on streaming live gameplay from Assassin's' Creed Unity.
The live stream showed off a bunch of interesting elements of the game, including the brand new character customization options and a look into some of the story missions available in Assassin's Creed Unity.
The live stream also showed off the versatility available within all of the side missions within Unity, and focused on the brand new environment that has been set in France. Quite frankly, Ubisoft have done an amazing job with AC: Unity, and it looks absolutely stunning, both in terms of graphics
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October 15, 2014
In an odd turn of events, Gearbox Studio CEO, Randy Pitchford, recalls his encounter with a bomb disposal unit. At around 7:30PM last Friday, a bomb disposal squad was sent to the Gearbox HQ.
Whilst most employees had gone home at this point, Randy Pitchford was still at work, and the bomb squad moved to the Gearbox HQ with the aim to 'dispose a car bomb' in the parking lot owned by Gearbox.
Whilst the disposal unit refused to give full details as to why they had been caught out, Randy Pitchford mentioned that he did not call the bomb squad, and he was unsure why such a problem escalated in the first place.
The most likely thing to have happened was that an individual decided to call the police to inform them of a car bomb in the Gearbox parking lot in an attempt to "prank" the company - it's a tactic that many streamers, Youtubers and companies involved in the gaming industry have had to deal with.
Whilst it's unlikely a car bomb was ever present at Gearbox