In The News
Weekend in Review:
Is Twitch the best platform for mobile esports viewing? Ramon Hermann, director of esports at Tencent Games, isn’t so sure. Here’s a snippet of The Daily Walkthrough’s interview with Hermann, “Tencent Esports Director: Twitch May Not Be The Best Platform For Mobile Competition“:
“‘Our player behavior or platform where they consume media is just different from [non-mobile] esports,’ Ramon continued. The premium mobile experience is ‘probably not going to be…’”
Apparently devs aren’t very sneaky when it comes to review manipulation on Steam, PC Gamer’s Samuel Horti reports. “Valve bans developers manipulating reviews ‘all the time’, and the practice is ‘really easy to spot’, according to Tom Giardino, who works on the Steam Business team … Not only is review manipulation easy to spot, even if developers post the fake reviews over a long time period, but it’s also not effective at boosting sales.”
Sea of Thieves has Xbox to thank in completing its 3-month sales goal in just a day, USGamer’s Matt Kim reports. “While the launch of Sea of Thieves was notable for being Rare’s first new IP launch in years, the release was also a big coming out for Xbox Game Pass, the debut of Microsoft allowing subscribers day one access to Xbox first party games like Sea of Thieves for $9.99 a month.”
Fallout 76’s “Country Roads” cover song is donating 100% of its proceeds to Habitat for Humanity, Gamasutra’s Emma Kidwell reports. “All sales of the cover of John Denver’s ‘Country Roads’ purchased from iTunes will go directly to funding Habitat For Humanity, a non-profit organization which seeks to build affordable housing with the help of volunteers.”
Nintendo’s Reggie Fils-Aimé did an interview with Imad Khan at ESPN about the company’s future in esports. Here’s a snippet: “‘I think you have to start with the big picture, and the big picture is that in the tournaments that we endorse, we want you to first be using wired controllers, and we want there…’”
Partnership News:
Evolved Talent Agency and ICM Partners are partnering, Esports Insider’s Adam Fitch reports. “Entering a joint venture partnership, ICM Partners will provide ‘ancillary opportunities and strategies’ for clients of Evolved.”
Counter Logic Gaming and Spectrum are partnering, according to a press release. “As part of the new partnership, Spectrum has outfitted the CLG Performance Center with dedicated Fiber Optic Internet service and will be the presenting partner of the center’s Spectrum Gaming Lounge.”
Miscellaneous Esports News:
Congratulations Rise Nation on winning the 2018 CWL Anaheim Open! They defeated Red Reserve.
Rough weekend. IG Vitality was accidentally disqualified from The International 2018 Chinese open qualifier. “The Dota 2 community is in an uproar over a supposedly errant ruling in The International 8 open qualifiers, which has caused a team to lose a match by default,” Dot Esports’ Patrick Bonifacio writes. “The ruling was apparently due to iG Vitality’s use of the Wildwing Ripper neutral creep’s Tornado ability, which was banned across all regions yesterday due to the presence of a game-breaking glitch tied to the ability.”
Happy weekend birthdayDaryl Koh “iceiceice” Pei Xiang!