“Aim towards the Enemy.”
IN THE NEWS
Oculus has noped out of E3 this year. It won’t have a booth at E3 in June, according to Venture Beat’s Joe Durbin.
“The decision to avoid an E3 booth this year makes more sense for the Oculus of 2017, which has gone through some dramatic changes since last year’s event took place,” Durbin writes. “This year, there is no new hardware on the horizon that would mandate such an aggressive push.”
A certain behemoth social media platform wants you to start using it to watch eSports. Dean Takahashi at Venture Beat interviewed Facebook’s Guy Cross and Stephen Ellis about how Facebook plans to draw viewers to its site for gaming.
“Gaming video is very different from other forms of video entertainment. It grew up on the internet,” Cross said.
Ellis thinks Facebook will attract streamers because “People love to share the games they play. They want validation and feedback. They need sharing to be easy. They need control of privacy and the ability to manage their audience flexibly,” which he believes Facebook does better than anyone else.
Nintendo slapped Breath of the NES, the 2D Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild game, with a take down notice. Kotaku’s Ethan Gach reports that “The takedown notice was posted to itch.io, the distribution platform that hosts Winter’s work, earlier today, replacing the game’s page with the notice sent from an attorney representing Nintendo of America that claimed Breath of the Wild was copyright infringement and against the site’s terms of service.”
Its creator, Winter Drake, says not to worry though, because “the project isn’t dead.”
LEAGUE LAND
Rammus will be the next tank to get a makeover following Midseason Patch 7.9, according to Dot Esports’ Aaron Mickunas. Lead gameplay designer Andrei “Meddler” van Roon had this to say about Rammus: “Looking at some tweaks aimed at giving a bit more satisfaction/skill expression to ability use, clearer counterplay and a bit of modernization (e.g. more consistent collision checking on Powerball).”
China’s top League of Legends league is ending relegation almost immediately and will allow franchising. It’s the first to eliminate relegation, and Dot Esports’ Callum Leslie reports that “The teams qualified for the Summer Split will all be guaranteed franchise spots, with relegation now abolished. The league will then be expanded to 14 teams in 2018, with a view to including 20 teams in the future.”
Both Schalke 04 and Paris Saint-Germain lost players over the weekend. Oskar “VandeR” Bogdan’s contract with Schalke 04 expired Sunday; he hinted he is going to join an LCS team, according to Adam Newell at Dot Esports. Paris Saint-Germain “parted ways with support player Hampus “sprattel” Mikael,” writes Newell. Na “Pilot” Woo-Hyung is also leaving.