Archive for esports

The numbers are in for the League of Legends Worlds and they are staggering, and not just the $1 million prize pool. Riot Games, developers of LoL, posted the viewership numbers for their world finals. The event itself was spread out over 15 days of competition and totaled 100 hours of gameplay to decide the champion.

According to Riot, the finals were broadcasted in 19 different languages utilizing 40 different casters and play-by-play partners. The grand finals between Samsung White and  Star Horn Royal Club was watched by a peak of 11.2 million viewers, the equivalent of almost all of the censured population of Ohio. Put a different way, it was as if Oregon, Oklahoma and Connecticut combined to tune in simultaneously.

Throughout the road to the grand finals, LoL Worlds caught 27 million unique viewers and 288 million impressions to see Samsung White win it all. The 179 million hour total of esports watching outpaces the 151ish million hours of the video Gangnam Style by Psy which recently broke YouTube. This year’s fall classic went a full seven games and average 13.9 million viewers, though the final out of game seven was viewed by 27.8 million people. The numbers between esports and baseball are suddenly comparable, not to mention the sold-out 45,000 seat Sangam Stadium venue.

On Riot’s website, dating back to January of this year, they claimed over 67 million users played LoL every month. Of them, 27 million play daily and Riot’s servers carry the load for 7.5 million people at peak hours. The world’s most popular video game is showing no signs of slowing down. Who else ready to tailgate for an esports match? If it’s too cold outside, how about a BarCraft instead?

(Header photo via Riotgames.com)

God Save The Queen! Esports is coming to London in the form of a specific arena designed for tournaments, league play and ladder competitions. Gfinity, a company whose mission statement is “to help push esports within the UK to a professional level, to raise awareness and to provide an arena for gamers to showcase their talent” is working on the first building of its type in the country.

No stranger to the realm of esports — Gfinity hosted G3 and its $145,000 prize pool spread across four different games — the arena is already slated to hold an astonishing 30 live events next year. With seating for up to 500 spectators to view the competitions unfold, the building may not be as large as Major League Gaming’s (MLG) new Ohio event building, it is nonetheless a great first step. The confirmed events include games such as StarCraft II, Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, Halo, FIFA 15, League of Legends and Hearthstone. Gfinity has set aside $500,000 for these tournaments in addition to their weekly cups (weekly tournaments) plus six “open” events where anyone can come to the arena to chase their professional gaming aspirations.

Though this is new to the United Kingdom, mainland Europe is no stranger to hosting massive local area network (LANs) games and live tournaments. From DreamHack to Electronic Sports World Cups (ESWC), esports have spread across Europe as quickly as their internet connections will take it. The UK has hosted previous annual large-scale LANs before, notably the yearly Insomnia events, however nothing in the same scale as what Gfinity has planned for 2015 and beyond.

With new venues, tournaments and competitions, esports — despite recent controversies — continues to grow around the world. With a multitude of streaming platforms ranging from Twitch.TV to YouTube to MLG.TV, the way to watch and esports at home is wide open. The live-and-in-person options are finally catching up.

(Header image via Gfinity)

As popularity in a sport grows, so too can the inherent trappings that go along with being in the mainstream. Fame and money come into it, which can sometimes lead to foul play. Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, a game by Valve Corporation that will be shown on the X Games in January, was hit with a massive cheating scandal over the past few days. Already three individual professional  players and two teams have been banned by Valve’s anti-cheat program, VAC.

The actual cheats themselves was detected not by Valve, but rather a competitive gaming league, ESEA. Once confirmed as a cheat, the league contacted Valve directly regarding the cheating and thus the bans were handed down via Valve Anti-Cheat or VAC. The programs used to improve the player’s aim is allegedly contained within a mouse software or on Valve’s own Steam Cloud, thus both went previously undetected by VAC as well as being usable while playing in a live-in person tournament. A game hack to improve aim such as an aimbot or aim lock, when the player has no vision or knowledge of the opposing player, is a blatant cheat.

The three players banned by VAC — dubbed as a VACation by reddit’s r/globaloffensive — are Simon “smn” Beck, Gordon “SF” Giry and Hovik “KQLY” Tovmassian. The significance of such an advantage cannot be understated, as killing the opposing team is often required to win rounds. In a competitive format, the first teams usually play a best of 3 across three different maps. First team to 16 round wins will take the map win.

These bans, as well as other players coming under suspicion, most notably Robin “Flusha” Rönnquist, come just before a major tournament at DreamHack Winter. According the DH website, the CS:GO alone portion of the tournament offers a prize pool of $250,000. Of the original eight invited teams to DH, two teams with the now banned cheaters have been disqualified.

With esports gaining more momentum and access to casual fans as well as the inquiring non-gamer, to see a cheating scandal of this magnitude hurts the CS:GO community, though not all is lost. While cheating is nothing new, other esports have had such events unfold and bounced back. In June of 2010, the StarCraft community was rocked when a match fixing scandal was confirmed in the most prestigious SC league, ProLeague. Then a total of 11 players were confirmed for throwing games in exchange for money from various gambling websites. While it is an entirely different game, it does give hope to CS:GO enthusiasts about bouncing back.

(Image via Valve’s Steam Store)

$750,000 in prize money — more than Xander Bogearts made this year and more than twice as much as Anthony Rendon made —  is up for grabs this weekend at BlizzCon. The annual expo put on by video game developer Blizzard Entertainment, BlizzCon, marks the start of the weekend’s world championship matches and for the first time the games will be live-streamed to ESPN3 as well as Twitch.TV. BlizzCon starts today and has been long host to championship world finals for Blizzard from StarCraft II to World of Warcraft. This year the company has also included their new latest project, Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft, and posted a total prize pool of a $250,000 for each game.

The ESPN3 schedule was tweeted out yesterday afternoon and will include an impressive array of viewing options for all three games today, starting at 12:45 eastern.

According to ESPN3’s schedule, they will also show the  matches leading up to and including the grand finals for each game tomorrow.

If you happen to be interested in more than the in-game action, there is the option to purchase the virtual ticket for BlizzCon, granting access to Q&A panels, exclusive previews and the ability to re-watch sections at a later date for the people who are too busy to sit and watch a stream for 10 hours.

Given ESPN’s recent backing of esports with their partnership between MLG and the X Games it should be no surprise to see even more events being streamed via ESPN3. With the general acceptance of esports rapidly growing — including professional players getting not just student visas to stay in the United States, but full on athlete visas — and the increased ease of access to live games via streaming services, expect more esports events to be shown to a wider audience.

Once more ESPN is partnering up with esports and Major League Gaming, again at a venue for the X Games. After the successful MLG debut at this year’s June X Games where Call of Duty: Ghosts was the game, this time the showcase for esports will be Counter-Strike: Global Offensive.

Both X Games and MLG executives were thrilled with June’s turnout and used that success to parlay this new venture. Tim Reed, senior director of X Games content strategy was quoted as saying:

We took a big step in creating a broader experience for our fans in Austin, with the new gaming event, the music festival and other interactive activities and content on site, and now we’re working to extend that to Aspen.

MLG President and co-founder Mike Sespo echoed a similar sentiment, telling ESPN

Our fan base was really electrified with the idea of having MLG competitions at the X Games and having our pro players earn X Games medals in Austin, where it was a tremendous success. We’re thrilled to announce that Austin wasn’t a one-off.

The 2015 Aspen X Games will take place from January 23-25 and will feature eight different qualified CS:GO teams. The original version of Counter-Strike debuted in 1999 as a Half-Life modification and different versions of the game have been in global competition since the early 2000’s.

After personally played CS 1.5 and 1.6 at a decently-high level, I can say I am thrilled to see CS:GO continue to gain steam. Despite being out for over two years, only recently has Global Offensive began to meet the previous high water marks in popularity of the Counter-Strike 1.5 and 1.6 — early-to-mid 2000’s — heyday.

If you plan on being in the crowd at Aspen, there is one downside: the esports section will be the only non-free admission area. The limited seating forces a premium to view CS:GO in person, however live streams will be available at MLG.tv as well as highlights on ESPN and ABC broadcasts. Tickets are currently available and the $100 price tag includes benefits such as reserved seating, a behind-the-scenes-tour and a gift bag full of MLG goodies. For a three-day weekend of live esports action, the price isn’t outlandish.

Continuing the merge of MLG and X Games events could very well continue, as Sespo told reporters

This is a dream partnership and we’ve always thought MLG and X Games would be a really good match. Austin was a very successful experiment where we learned that these sports play well together and that we can dramatically open up the audience on both sides of the partnership.

Over the years MLG has proven to be a stable platform for displaying esports to a greater population. The continued support of ESPN and the X Games will extend MLG’s reach even further.

(Header image via Piotr Drabik)

Between esports scholarships and ESPN previously showing the Defense of the Ancients 2 — or DotA 2 — on their ESPN3 stream, the “worldwide leader” is continuing their foray into esports. Yesterday ESPN announced their intent to broadcast the League of Legends — commonly shortened to LoL — World Championship finals on ESPN3 this Sunday, October 19 at 2:30 am Eastern, 11:30 pm Pacific. The finals are being held in South Korea, almost inarguably the esports capital of the world.

The announcement came as a bit of a surprise given not even a month ago ESPN President John Skipper didn’t mince words on his thoughts on the esports as a sport debate at the Code/Media Series: New York:

“It’s not a sport — it’s a competition. Chess is a competition. Checkers is a competition…Mostly, I’m interested in doing real sports.”

The signals may be getting mixed, as according to some sources, ESPN execs were “delighted” with the viewership numbers from their DotA 2 stream. While there may not be any other DotA 2 events in the near future for ESPN, it is clear the network is interested in esports.

Athletes are getting on the esports hype train too. Gordon Hayward of the Utah Jazz recently tweeted his affection for LoL while simultaneously challenging LeBron James. Hayward, no stranger to esports has previously mentioned StarCraft II and even joined a StarCraft II tournament.

Regardless of whether professional athletes join the ranks of professional gamers, ESPN has clearly found the previously little niche genre of esports is rapidly growing. Between the streams available on Twitch.TV, YouTube and ESPN, plenty of LoL action will be viewable this weekend. While we aren’t at the point of tailgating for esports, we’re getting awfully close. As more and more companies realize the viewership potential, ad revenue and product placement opportunities, expect the contrast between esports and sports continue to fade.
(Header image via Riot Games, makers of League of Legend)