Early August means slow activity for everyone but Esports. With The International 2016 finally live and Overwatch breaking records, there’s no way we’ll slack at the beach. Here’s your weekly digest!
TI6: The pinnacle of the MOBA era?
Valve huge Dota tournament is the talk of the town, from its infamous prize money approaching the historic $20M mark to its numerous storylines, drama and top notch actions – and yes, we’re covering it all.
It will be interesting to see if MOBAs are peaking like everyone is predicting, as the community crowdfunding grew less compared to last year and the active players pool even dived under the all-time high 13M. League of Legends is also feeling the stagnation, as viewership on Twitch has been quite stable this season and South Korea seems to fall in love with love with a challenger named Overwatch…
Overwatch: Summer Hit
Who can stop Overwatch? Hailed as the next big thing in Esport, the Blizzard shooter has been performing above expectations. Blizzard has been bragging about its latest IP performances since its launch: 15M active players, beating Diablo III as the biggest launch performance. More interesting is the Asian market, known to prefer RTS and MOBAs. Blizzard claims that Overwatch is the fastest selling PC game in China and overtook League Of Legends in South Korean PC Bangs. We can confirm on the latter claim.
Now, what’s next? We discovered a Seasonal Event for this month and a World Cup for November’s Blizzcon. Enhanced spectator mode and stats are also in the pipes, proving Overwatch is definitely gunning for the Esport throne.
Battleborn… Dead?
The same cannot be said for Battleborn. Take-Twos own take on class-based FPS has been struggling since its launch and after heavy promotion and early discounts, the towel is thrown. Take-Two president Strauss Zelnick had to admit the game failed.
It feels like 2004 when people would launch MMOs during the World of Warcraft frenzy or 2013 where a bunch of MOBAs went crashing at LoL and Dota’s doors. Timing is everything.
Quake Champions: Same Recipe, different Flavor
Watching all these FPS brats fighting each other, Quake keeps grinning. The father of (fast) FPS is still well and alive. The Quakecon tournaments (which we power) gather fewer players, all of them being seasoned fragger or straight railgun gods. While Esport legends like Zero4 or Faze were fragging each other of 25 years old maps, iD Software gave us a glimpse at Quake’s future.
Quake Champions first gameplay trailer felt right: it’s beautiful, it has abilities but above all, it feels like Quake. The oldest Esport in history may be the surprise underdog for the Esport era to come…
