eSports Update – 10 Things You May Have Missed!
What a phenomenal weekend of eSports we experienced last weekend! The LoL World Final (Berlin) was hotly contested by two Korean teams, with the favorites SK Telecom T1 beating the Koo Tigers.
At DreamHack Cluj-Nampoca, The French CS:GO team, EnVyUs, went one better than their last performance in a Major and beat NaVi in the final despite Navi showing glimpses of the team they used to be.
Team Secret emerged the winners of the inaugural Nanyang Championships in Singapore after almost 7 hours of play against Vici Gaming. We’ve found a great video interview of Team Secret’s captain straight after their win.
Despite the hype around all of these events, there’s been more exciting news this week for us to share. Jens Hilgers (Founder of Turtle Entertainment/ESL) has been developing a criterion to show how eSports relate to each other.
CS:GO fans in Asia will be excited to read about the Asian based tournament host and matchmaking provider SoStronks – KOTH Asia #1 looking to expand the CS:GO scene in area.
The NiP’s payment scandal continues and more streaming sites emerge as competition to the mighty Twitch.
Catch up these stories and more below.
1. WORLDS: HOW SK TELECOM T1 WON THE 2015 LEAGUE OF LEGENDS CHAMPIONSHIP
“It’s all over. After weeks of battling it out on the Rift, SK Telecom T1 are your 2015 League of Legends World Champions.
They didn’t seem to have too much of a struggle, either. Going 15-1 over the course of the tournament, Faker and co. didn’t drop a single game until Game 3 of the Finals. There, against their LCK rivals KOO Tigers, their blood was finally spilled against their fellow Korean countrymen. But the upset was not to be. 2015 was simply the year of SK Telecom T1 rising again and proving they were the best in the world.”
Read the full story here
2. ENVYUS TAKE THE FINAL DREAMHACK MAJOR IN CLUJ-NAPOCA
“After a weekend of upsets, EnvyUS met Natus Vincere in the Grand Final of Dreamhack’s final major of the year in Cluj-Napoca, Romania. EnvyUS, who sent Fnatic packing on Saturday evening, earned their rightful spot in the Grand Final being dubbed the best team at the event. Na’Vi on the other hand had an extremely tough road to the Grand Finals but stunned the crowd as they all got a glimpse of the team they once loved. Na’Vi proved to be a force to be reckoned with, but EnvyUS showed up on the day and did not plan on being stopped so soon.”
Read the full story here
3. JENS HILGERS LAUNCHES THE ESPORTS GAMES CHART TO EVALUATE GAMES AS ESPORTS
“Evaluating where esports lie in relation to each other is a difficult task. But Jens Hilgers, founder of Turtle Entertainment and CEO of DOJO MADNESS, has slowly been developing criteria to do just that. Today, he published the first eSports Games Chart, a culmination of this line of thinking that has helped him throughout his many years in the industry.
According to Hilgers, the three best metrics to evaluate an esport are monthly active users, total yearly prize pool, and monthly hours streamed. By setting standards across those three variables, he has determined a series of tiers that esports can fall into.”
Read the full story here
4. MILLION-DOLLAR DEAL FOR PRO-GAMING TEAM (DIGINITAS LoL SQUAD)
“A professional League of Legends (LoL) team has been sold for a fee “close to” $1m (£625,000). The deal involves the European LoL squad from Team Dignitas which has been sold to the Follow Esports group. Early reports about the sale suggested the team would be sold for around $500,000 (£324,000).
However, Michael O’Dell ,general manager of Team Dignitas, said that the final deal was far higher than the early estimate. “It was closer to $1m, I can’t say the exact amount,” Mr O’Dell told the BBC.
Four players, Martin “Wunderwear” Hansen, Chres “Sencux” Laursen, Kasper “Kobbe” Kobberup and Nicolai “Nisbeth” Nisbeth, transfer to Follow Esports under the deal. It is currently looking to recruit one more player to round out its squad and to employ a head coach and lead analyst to support the players.”
Read the full story here
5. SOSTRONK LAUNCH KING OF THE HILL – ASIA #1
“It is with great pleasure, SoStronk presents King of the Hill – Asia #1!
Continuing our KOTH and Challenger Series, SoStronk is now expanding into the rest of Asia with the first edition of KOTH Asia, featuring some of the very best CS:GO line-ups that Asia has to offer.
Boasting some of the best talents in Asia, we have the following teams who will be duking from the 4th to the 7th of November it out for $4000, where the winner takes all:
MVP Karnal – Malaysia
Team Secret – Vietnam
Team Puzzle – China
Team nxl> – Indonesia
Head over here for the schedule, the brackets and more details. All games will be streamed and casted on the SoStronk twitch channel.”
6. BEHIND TEAM SECRET’S WIN AT NANYANG CHAMPIONSHIPS
“The inaugural Nanyang Championships crowned Team Secret as its first winner after a close to 7 hours BO5 match. Team Secret defeated Vici Gaming for the second time in the tournament with a 3-2, earning the grand prize of around USD$109,000.
We caught up with Puppey, captain of Team Secret, for a short interview after their outstanding win to gain some insights into how they feel about their strongest opponent in the tournament, and also get some invaluable advice on playing Dota 2.”
Read the full story here
7. BREAKING THROUGH: A FAN’S PERSPECTIVE ON THE DEVELOPMENT ON PHILIPPINE’S ESPORTS
“Last Saturday, League of Legends players in the Philippines gathered for a viewing party of the League of Legends Season 5 World Championship finals in SM North EDSA’s Cinema 8. The event’s organizer, RUMBLE ROYALE, said that over a thousand tickets were sold in the span of just three days. The one thousand attendees were cheering their hearts out collectively as they witnessed the crowning of the Season 5 World Champion.
Besides that, all of the attendees were each given a free Championship Kalista game code as well as treated to raffle giveaways courtesy of RUMBLE ROYALE and Garena Philippines.”
Read the full story here
8. ON THIS TUESDAY IN 1997: TOTAL ENTERTAINMENT NEWTWORK ANNOUNCES THE START OF THE PROFESSIONAL GAMERS LEAGUE AT A PRESS CONFERENCE AT CANDLESTICK PARK
“Thresh, whose real name is Dennis Fong, is perhaps the world’s first truly professional computer game player. He has an agent. He has endorsement deals. He has a Ferrari.
He is also the marquee name in what is being billed as the Professional Gamers League, or PGL, a bold attempt to bring gaming into the ranks of professional sports.
“It’s kind of crazy,” said Fong, a 20-year-old Berkeley resident. “But I always thought gaming would head in this direction.”
The PGL is the brainchild of Total Entertainment Network, or TEN, one of a handful of game services that have sprouted up on the Internet over the last two years, allowing players around the world to compete against one another in intense shootouts.”
Read the full story here
9. ESPORTS TEAM NIP’S STARS REPORTEDLY STILL OWED THOUSANDS FROM ORGANISATION
“The legendary Swedish Counter-Strike organisation Ninjas in Pyjamas owes the players that made it the biggest brand in the game thousands of dollars in prize money and deferred salaries, sources tell Breitbart.
Sources close to the organisation provided Breitbart with a break down of money that was currently in the process of being paid out to the players over the last four months, with much of it still not in the hands of those who earned it. The source added, “The excuses for non-payment range from the tournaments having not paid on time to the players not meeting their contracted streaming hours.”
Read the full story here
10. GAME STREAMER HITBOX TAKES ON TWITCH WUTH 4K ESPORTS BROADCASTS
“Pop quiz hotshot: Name a game broadcasting service that isn’t Twitch, YouTube Gamingor MLG.tv. Give up? You’re forgiven. Vienna-based Hitbox.tv is relatively new to the space and its looking to make a name for itself by offering features that the competition doesn’t. Like streaming eSports events in 4K at 60FPS starting this fall, for instance. As Twitch expands into more and more non-gaming avenues, Hitbox thinks it can serve the core crowd that might feel alienated by those moves. The Austrian company has picked up some new investments recently — most notably from the folks behind World of Tanks, Wargaming. A canned statement from the latter says that forthcoming games will “integrate game data” into broadcasts and that it should be pretty easy to do so. Hitbox also offers a wide-open revenue split system that every broadcaster has access to, rather than Twitch’s curated Partner program highlighting its top broadcasters.”
Read the full story here
