MCV/DEVELOP News, events, research and jobs from the games industry
ESL One Cologne, the most recent CS:GO major, has broken a ton of records including attendance and social media engagement. More than 14,000 people packed into the LANXESS arena on each of the main event days, making it one of the biggest eSports tournaments ever. Viewership was also up on …
Read More »Leffen to miss EVO after all due to further visa issues
Professional Super Smash Bros. Melee player William "Leffen" Hjelt will not attend EVO this weekend due to visa issues. The Swedish player is still waiting for a letter of approval from the US embassy, which is taking longer than expected due to him being deported from the US last year. …
Read More »Mountain Dew CS:GO League to give amateur teams a shot at the ESL Pro League
MTN DEW has partnered with ESL and ESEA to create the Mountain Dew League, an amateur CS:GO competition that offers qualification to the ESL Pro League. The competition will start with the Mountain Dew Last Chance Qualifier, which will see more than 7,400 amateur players compete in ranked matchmaking on …
Read More »Hero Limit: Why Not 6 Winstons?
Blizzard doesn’t want a hero limit although many players and tournament organizers do. What are the arguments on both sides of the debate? MOBAs follow the convention of only allowing one or two unique heroes on a map. Why is Overwatch giving free reign? After all, the character element came …
Read More »The top 10 players competing at Evo 2016
In two days, over 15,000 contenders will gather to compete in the world’s largest fighting game tournament: the Evolution Championship Series (Evo). This year, the event’s set of nine titles includes Street Fighter V, Super Smash Bros. Melee, Super Smash Bros. for Wii U, Mortal Kombat X, Ultimate Marvel vs. …
Read More »A basic comparison of champion select trends across five major regions
Until recently, draft phases had become homogenized internationally. Watching a game in a given major league followed the same patterns. Spectators expressed irritation that "everyone was just copying Korea." That seems to have changed this summer, as teams within leagues and leagues themselves have begun to prioritize different picks. Looking …
Read More »Regulating The Billion-Dollar ESports World Is Nearly Impossible
There’s a new Esports sheriff in town, ready to combat the influx of gamblers and would-be match fixers that have descended upon the burgeoning, soon-to-be $1.9 billion dollar industry, hoping to stem the tide of rigged games that have plagued the world of professional gaming of late. Read more on …
Read More »Analyzing Clash Royale’s tournament feature: esports as a marketing tool
After creating a competitive mobile hits like Clash of Clans and Clash Royale, and being valued at roughly $10 billion after the Tencent buy, we think Supercell has a pretty good chance of making quite a splash into the esports industry. And, as we said already, Clash Royale has the …
Read More »ECS CS:GO league returns for season two
The Esports Championship Series is set to return for its second season in October, with open qualifiers for the league taking place next month. The competition, which is a partnership between FACEIT and Twitch, just wrapped up its first season at Wembley Arena, but plans for the next event have …
Read More »Kjaerbye and karrigan talk new Astralis roster
Perhaps the biggest and most surprising roster change in Counter-Strike this year was the transfer of Markus Kjaerbye” Kjrbye from Team Dignitas to Astralis and Rene cajunb” Borg going in the other direction. At the time, both sides were struggling and seemed to be in need of some kind of …
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