The Daily Walkthrough – 7/18/17

“If you run, you won’t see me stab you!”

IN THE NEWS

CHECK IT OUT! Yes, that’s exactly what you think it is: Atari’s NEW GAMING CONSOLE! It’s called the Ataribox, and comes in 2 distinct styles. The first, GamesBeat’s Dean Takahashi explains, “has wood-grain siding, giving a nostalgic look to the PC-based box (the original 2600 had similar paneling). The other version is a modern black console with a red logo and a red back.” Atari hasn’t said much else about the console, but is encouraging design feedback through mediums like Twitter and Facebook.

The last 72 hours have not been kind to esports video streaming. First, it was Twitch over the weekend. Now, it’s PGL. PGL had some serious issues keeping its stream of the PGL Major Krakow 2017 going Monday. At one point, the stream stopped entirely, with PGL tweeting out, “Due to technical difficulties the @BIGCLANgg vs @Cloud9 match will be finished off stream. #pglmajor.” That tweet was followed by a second, “Working on fixing the issues before the start of the next match. #pglmajor.”

Critics were quick to jump on PGL, tweeting things like “Is this actually a joke? WTF,” “PGL’s first and only major” and “Worst major of cs:go history.”

G2 Esports jumped in to say it had a Facebook Live going, much to the relief of viewers. PGL’s Twitch channel eventually got back up and running, but not before losing hundreds of thousands of viewers.

PlayerUnknown wants feedback on Battlegrounds’ in-game HUD. A new blog post is up on Steam asking for players to help decide between 2 possible directions the development team is going to take. The game beat out Grand Theft Auto V to hit #4 highest peak player count on Steam for the last 48 hours, at 382,561.

• Option A: Without having to open the inventory, the players should be able to check the availability and quantity of consumable items and grenades through the in-game UI.
  • As a competitive shooter, the player must have all information readily available to facilitate fast decision-making and focus on tactics and combat.
  • Opening the inventory screen greatly reduces the player’s situational awareness and hinders their ability to concentrate on the competition.
  • The availability of this information allows low-level players to perform at a higher standard and provides greater accessibility to new players.
• Option B: Just as it is now, the players must choose when to open their inventory or preemptively memorize their own status.
  • As a realistic battle royale, too much information can detract from the immersive experience.
  • Understanding the risks of checking your inventory during certain situations is part of the battle royale experience.
  • The ability to make quick decisions based on the player’s understanding of their current status, without relying on the UI, is one of many important skills in battle royale.
  • A minimal UI in the game improves immersion, which in turn provides more enjoyable and intense moments.

On top of that, PUBG announced “you will be able to design your character to a tee.”

George A. Romero, the man who made the zombie horror genre legendary with movies like “Night of the Living Dead,” has passed away from lung cancer at 77. “Call of Duty fans may remember his playable cameo in Black Ops’ Call of the Dead zombie expansion,” Eurogamer’s Tom Phillips reports. His influence spread to titles like The Last of Us and Resident Evil 1 and 2.

Super League Gaming is expanding to 12 cities after raising $15 million in a Series C funding round. The cities are San Francisco, Seattle, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Phoenix, Denver, Dallas, Houston, Chicago, New York, Boston, and Miami. The Esports Observer’s Ferguson Mitchell reports that SLG’s League of Legends circuit, City Champs, will be in all those cities.

The Balkans now have an esports league. Called Esports Balkan League, it will feature competitive play in LoL and CS:GO. “EBL will premiere in September and for the 2017/2018 season it will feature a prize pool of [roughly $140,000], which is the largest prize fund in the history of esports in this region,” the announcement page reads. Titles included in the league will eventually span beyond the two mentioned above.

DXRacer is asking for your help picking the design for its next chair. You can vote here. Giving them your name and email will net you 1 ticket, and doing additional actions like visiting their Facebook and Instagram pages will get you more entries to win prizes.

StarCraft 2’s War Chest is here, and it’s looking pretty slick. “The chests contain an array of digital content, which includes a comic, a full set of skins for each race, additional decals, sprays, and chat emoticons,” Adam Newell at Dot Esports reports. “These items are spread out across three separate phases. Phase one unlocks on July 20, phase two unlocks August 17, and the final phase unlocks on September 14.”

Switch the channel to Disney XD this summer and you might catch a glimpse of esports programming. “Esports league ESL is coming to cable TV, broadcasting ESL Brawlers and ESL SpeedRunners,” Steve Dent at Engadget reports. “The two series will feature on Disney’s D|XP, a summer programming block devoted to gaming. ESL Brawler pits the best Street Fighter V players in a first to 10 match, with winners defending their title against a new contender each week and fighting it out in a final Vainglory championship on week seven. The SpeedRunner event is more of a free-for-all, pitting the best players against each other to finish the game fastest, while chasing a world record.”

Sarsion is a Redditor specializing in documenting and recording the Fallen’s language, Eliksni, from the Destiny franchise. A fancy new video Sarsion published goes over “a dictionary of 87 words, the basics of Eliksni grammar and, better yet, a custom video with none other than Variks to teach the class,” Polygon’s Owen S. Good reports.

If you played every Fallout game in succession, how long do you think it would take you to finish? If your name is the mildly questionable tomatoanus, that time is under 2 hours. Tomatoanus uploaded a video showing the completion of all 4 games in a crazy 1 hour, 37 minutes and 54 seconds. “This run in particular, though, sees the player taking on each game consecutively from Interplay Entertainment’s Fallout to Bethesda‘s Fallout 4 with no breaks, earning them the number one spot in the Fallout Anthology speedrun.com leaderboard,” Game Rant’s Kyle Sledge writes.

Be careful buying Ryzen processors on Amazon right now, please. Apparently, 2 people have reported as being swindled after purchasing what they thought was a Ryzen processor. PC Gamer’s Paul Lilly reports that “Over the last week and a half, at least two users reported having received an Intel Celeron processor masquerading as an AMD Rzyen chip when shopping at Amazon.”

Splatoon 2 is getting its own anime after the game releases July 21 on Nintendo Switch. Japanese magazine CoroCoro is showcasing the anime on its YouTube channel. GameSpot’s Kevin Knezevic writes that “The animated adaptation will be based on CoroCoro’s monthly manga series, which follows a team of Blue Inklings as they take part in Turf Wars against other teams. The anime premieres on August 12.”

Leap Motion has raised $50 million in Series C funding to further develop VR hand tracking. The company’s board of directors now includes a member from JP Morgan. “Leap Motion said that the infusion of capital will enable it to accelerate its global expansion, particularly into Asia,” Games Industry’s James Brightman reports. “The company will be opening an office in Shanghai, China, and hopes that the money will also help it to more quickly launch new commercial and enterprise applications for industries apart from entertainment, such as education, healthcare, and industrial training simulation.”

LEAGUE LAND

It has been 2 months since Mid-Season Invitational 2017, and Riot has finally released viewership numbers. Aaron Mickunas at Dot Esports reports that “There were just 4.3 million concurrent viewers at the broadcast’s peak—and while that may seem like a lot, it’s a far cry from last year’s MSI, which punched in at 6 million peak concurrent viewers.” While concurrents were down, overall viewership was not: “In 2016, there were 119 million hours watched by the fans over the entire tourney. This year, however, it was a whopping 218 million hours watched.”

Hotfixes: Duskblade is getting a fix to reduce its damage. Its damage will be lowered from 105-360 to 55-360.

Nunu and Singed got emergency fixes due to unexpected power spikes from the most recent patch.

Buffs: Jinx, Sivir and Ezreal are getting some lovin’. Current PBE buffs include a Q cooldown reduction for Ezreal, Boomerang Blade damage increases of 30 points per rank for Sivir and Jinx’s Zap! ability is getting a cooldown reduction.

Interviews: Team Dignitas support Adrian “Adrian” Ma and H2K Gaming jungler Marcin “Jankos” Jankowski.

The 2017 EU and NA LCS Summer Splits are ongoing.

Tickets are on sale for the EU LCS Finals. Get them here.

Return of the Legends starts Aug. 4.

Champion and skin sale July 18-21: Bird of Prey Anivia, Mafia Graves, Dark Crystal Ryze and Arctic Ops Varus. Vi, Rengar, Urgot and Rumble.

Weekly free champions: Braum, Caitlyn, Karma, Lux, Nocturne, Ryze, Swain, Tryndamere, Udyr and Vayne.

OVER/UNDER WATCH

Drop rates confirmed across all regions: Blizzard revealed drop rates in South Korea recently, and Dot Esports’ Nicole Carpenter has now received confirmation from them that the drop rates apply to all regions. “There’s a one in 5.5 chance to be gifted an Epic item. Legendary items have a drop rate of one in every 13.5 loot boxes. Roughly, that equals out to be a 18.19 percent chance to earn an Epic item, and a 7.4 percent chance of receiving a Legendary item. Each box will definitely include four items—at least one of which will be a Rare item.”

Uh oh. One of the big boys is not too happy. Major League Baseball has an issue with Overwatch League’s logo allegedly being too similar to its own, and has filed paperwork with the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board, an arm of the United States Patent and Trademark Office. “Following publication of the League’s logo on March 28, Major League Baseball took issue with the likeness of the logo to its own,” Michael Lee at Morrison / Lee writes. “MLB requested an extension of time to oppose the logo, stating that it needed an additional 90 days to investigate the claim and to confer with counsel.”

There’s a new week 7 meta report out for PC. Winston and D.Va’s usage are up across the board, except in Bronze where Hanzo and Zenyatta are seeing more use, and in Silver and Grand Master, where Winston and Zenyatta use is up.

Team EnVyUs head coach Kyle Souder held an AMA on Reddit yesterday. Check it out here.

IN: Martin “Graceful” Wongprom, Kevin Moffitt and Elijah “Elkiea” Gallagher have joined MEGA Thunder.

Overwatch Chicago Season 3 League will be Aug. 10-Aug. 31. The entry fee is $25.

The TESPA Summer Series is ongoing through Aug. 20.

The Collegiate Star League is ongoing through Aug. 26.

Overwatch World Cup tickets are on sale for Australia (7/21-7/23) and Poland (8/4-8/6), but not America (8/11-8/13).

We’ve got the official Sydney Group Stage preview from Blizzard. Check it out here.

OGN Overwatch APEX Challengers Season 3’s Grand Final will be held in Busan Haeundae Beach, South Korea, July 29, between Lunatic-Hai and Kongdoo Panthera.

APEX Season 4’s teams have been finalized: Lunatic-Hai, Kongdoo Panthera, Afreeca Freecs Blue, X6-Gaming, LuxuryWatch Blue, Meta Athena, CONBOX, Runaway, MVP Space, Kongdoo Uncia, Flash Lux, LuxuryWatch Red, GC Busan, NC Foxes, ROX Orcas and Meta Bellum.

DOTA-THON

Congratulations to World Cyber Arena 2017 SEA qualifiers Mineski and Execration.

The Battle Pass is at $21.5 million for The International 2017.

DreamHack Atlanta 2017 is July 21-23.

Dota 2 is hosting a short film competition. Submissions are open through July 25.

There are 10 matches today.

Yesterday’s match results can be found here.

WAKE ME UP BEFORE YOU CS:GO

DreamHack Atlanta is July 21.

PGL Major Krakow 2017 is July 21-23. The Group Stage had started. Reddit has an overview thread here.

Monday winners:

• North beat Penta Sports 16-9.
• Mousesports beat FaZe Clan 19-15.
• Natus Vincere beat FlipSid3 16-9.
• Immortals beat Vega Squadron 16-6.
• BIG beat Cloud 9 16-11.
• Gambit beat G2 Esports 16-6.
• SK Gaming beat Astralis 16-8.
• Virtus.pro beat Fnatic 16-11.

Teams came together yesterday to make a “gentleman’s agreement” not to use “crouch jump.” Despite much discussion, and that decision by the teams not to use the technique, PGL has decreed that the “crouch jump” is perfectly legal to use during the Major.

Interviews: Robin “ropz” Kool.

DreamHack Masters Malmo 2017 is Aug. 30-Sept. 3.

ESL One New York 2017 is Sept. 15-16.

Intel Extreme Masters World Champions is Nov. 18-19 in Oakland, Calif.

BLAST Pro Series is Nov. 24 in Copenhagen. The prize pool is $250,000.

Mapcore and FACEIT have $10,000 for the top 4 bomb defusal and hostage-rescue maps CS:GO players can create. The contest entry deadline is Oct. 31, 2017, and winners will be chosen in December.

There are 0 matches today.

Yesterday’s match results can be found here.

WINS AND FAILS

It’s important to laugh. That’s why TheDW has compiled some of the best wins and fails of the last 24 hours, delivered to you in a convenient gif package.

1. Never interrupt an artist at work.
2. Hello, butter fingers.
3. How in the world does anyone make Lucio go this fast?

Did you see something better? Shoot TheDW an email at katie@thedailywalkthrough.com with the subject line GIF. If we like it, we’ll throw it in tomorrow’s walkthrough!

SECRET UNLOCKED

Nintendo Switchs are back in stock at GameStop! Certain stores will get “limited quantities” between yesterday and July 21.

Both Runescape games, Runescape and Old School Runescape, are coming to “mobile and tablet devices,” AFKer’s Ronald Mina reports. “The two titles will feature full interoperable play, allowing players to jump from PC to mobile platforms and back again … Old School RuneScape is set to debut on mobile platforms this winter, with RuneScape to follow.”

New Xbox Games with Gold titles are here through July 24. Thanks to GameSpot’s Eddie Makuch for compiling some of the best ones:

• Xbox One:
  • Battlefield 4 ($5)
  • Battlefield Hardline ($5)
  • DMC: Devil May Cry Definitive Edition ($9.90)
  • Mirror’s Edge Catalyst ($5)
  • Sherlock Holmes: The Devil’s Daughter ($18.50)
  • Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 5 ($19.80)
• Xbox 360:
  • Prototype ($10)
  • Prototype 2 ($15)
  • Blue Dragon ($10)
  • DMC: Devil May Cry HD Collection ($4)

UPCOMING RELEASES AND EVENTS

RELEASES

Superhot will be out in America July 21 for PlayStation 4. It’ll be out tomorrow in Australia and July 19 for Europe.

Orcs Must Die! Unchanged is out on PlayStation 4 today and is free to play.

What Remains of Edith Finch is out on Xbox One tomorrow for $20.

Pro Evolution Soccer 2018’s online beta starts July 20 for PlayStation 4 and goes through the 31st.

Gigantic will be available on Steam. It’s out July 20.

Destiny 2’s open beta is July 21-23 for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. Those who preordered will be able to play starting July 18 on PS4 and July 19 on Xbox.

Fable Fortune has been delayed until July 25 for Xbox One and PC.

Namco Museum is out July 28 for $29.99 on the Nintendo Switch.

Secret World Legends is out July 31 on Steam.

StarCraft Remastered releases Aug. 14 for $15.

EVENTS

July 20: San Diego Comic-Con International.

Rocket League Championship Series Season 4 starts in August.

Niantic is hosting Pokemon Go Fest in Chicago July 22.

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT

Former Valve writer Marc Laidlaw did an interview with Arcade Attack about “the glory days and why collaboration is always the best way forward.”

Another roster update for Call of Duty: WWII Zombies mode: Katheryn Winnick.

COMMENTS AND SUGGESTIONS

Whether you hate it, love it, miss it or want it, send TheDW an email at katie@thedailywalkthrough.com.

Thanks for reading!