It’s no secret that Fortnite is one of the biggest games in the world, we all know that, right? But how big are we talking? Well, Epic Games has revealed that the game has surpassed 350 million registered players! In the month of April, those players spend 3.2 billion hours playing the game. Mind boggling! This is the same game that had a virtual Travis Scott performance with 27 million players logging in, and a launch of Fortnite Party Royal coming soon, it’s only going to get bigger.
The Newbee Dota 2 roster has received a lifetime ban from ImbaTV and the Chinese Dota 2 Professional Association after a match-fixing scandal. All five players and the manager, Feng, have been banned indefinitely and have been barred from competing in all events run by both parties.
Newbee were the 2014 Dota 2 International winners and placed as runners-up in 2017. They’ve also won multiple tournaments across the globe and both Zeng ‘Faith’ Hongda and Xu ‘Moogy’ Han, two players of worldwide fame, are now banned. The scandal supposedly took place during the China Dota 2 Pro League Season 2 and DPL-CDA Professional League Season 1, run by both parties. The team saw some poor results in both tournaments which caused the organizers to investigate the results, seeing that the matches were fixed for gambling benefits.
All other matches that the team had to play were then cancelled, with opponents given automatic wins. The evidence of the match fixing has been sent to Valve, developers of Dota 2, and so far, nothing has been issues. If history is anything to go by, Valve will likely smite them with their hammer of justice, as they did for iBUYPOWER in Counter-Strike: Global Offensive.
13 Rocket League Championship Series teams have sent a collective letter to Psyonix, the Rocket League developer, airing a list of grievances regarding the handling and administrative practices surrounding the RLCS. Teams such as G2 Esports, NRG, Renault Vitality and more, has the teams voicing their concern about the tournament and a lack of communication between the league and the teams around prize money, slot ownership and monetization of the league.
The letter suggests a number of fixes including calls between team owners and league personal, partnership and marketing opportunities, as well as content tie-ins to team initiatives. They are also asking for the season schedule to be shared in a more timeous fashion to ensure that plans for the teams can go accordingly. A large majority of the competitive scene seems to be under the impression that something needs to change and Psyonix needs to make these changes before something drastic happens with the esports.
We’ve been covering a fair amount of virtual racing recently and that’s because it’s so exciting to watch, but also, so competitive. Alex Marquez beat his brother Marc in the Misano Virtual MotoGP race this weekend, as it went all the way down to the final lap. Marc was about to take a win but ran wide at the final corner, allowing Alex to slip through on the inside to claim his second victory.
Alex was actually wiped out on lap 7 of the 9 laps with Fabio Quartararo, who then both tried to hunt down the leader in the last few laps. Quartararo wasn’t up to it though as Valentino Rossi was able to land in the third spot, actually making the podium.
Players from all walks of life are taking part in the Virtual MotoGP, with Misano being the second use on MotoGP 2020 on PlayStation 4. Since the MotoGP season is still on hold and has no signs of restarting in the near future, more Virtual races are expected to continue, so stay tuned so that you can catch all the action.
