The B/R Weekly Rushdown: June 29, 2016
The first Weekly Rushdown was hectic thanks to E3 and all the news that comes with it. The second one? Nice and calm. No big, earthshaking stuff...easy!
Week 3 of the Weekly Rushdown, however, brings some of the biggest news to date. Chinese hedge funds! Class-action lawsuits! Korean coups! Professional wrestling! This week has it all.
Jump right in, folks!
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Pro Wrestling Takes Center Stage at CEO2016
WWE superstar Xavier Woods (also known as Austin Creed) has become something of an ambassador between the worlds of professional wrestling and competitive gaming through his YouTube channel Up Up Down Down. That was on full display at Community Effort Orlando 2016.
Former IWGP intercontinental champion Kenny Omega was one of the biggest stars of CEO. He gave everyone in attendance a treat when he cut a wide-reaching promo on legendary fighting gamer Justin Wong. The fun didn't end there, though!
Hardcore wrestling fans know about the ongoing feud between New Japan Pro Wrestling heel stable The Elite and WWE tag team champions The New Day. The groups have sniped back and forth at each other on social media, on merchandise and, occasionally, on air for a year now. That set the stage for an epic grudge match when Woods made a surprise appearance and crashed the stage.
Unfortunately for Woods, Omega is now the official winner of their monthslong video game rivalry, which has spanned a number of arcade classics like NBA Jam and Daytona USA. But hey! At least Woods still has a title to keep him warm at night, unlike a certain someone who handed his belt over to Michael Elgin at Dominion.
EA's eSports Plans Taking Shape?
Two weeks back, the Weekly Rushdown discussed Electronic Arts' E3 announcement that it was going to make a major push into the realm of eSports. At the time, there weren't any clear plans in place. Today, however, things are starting to take shape.
EA Sports executive Peter Moore gave some specifics about those plans to Rachel Weber of GameIndustry.biz. According to Moore, the previously described three tiers of tournaments are, as speculated, similar to the Capcom Pro Tour. While "Challenger" tier tournaments will largely be fan-driven and "for fun," EA will work alongside major organizers for the "Premier" tier events.
"Sometimes we'll get involved, sometimes we just stay out of the way, brands come in here and now this is where the Coca Cola's are going to go 'we've got to go find this next generation, because they're not watching TV anymore,' so ESL, the Dreamhacks, we see that layer.
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As for the Majors?
"And finally the EA Majors, where we'll go in, write big checks to the winners recognising they're working hard. We'll build the glitz and glamour type events, which then you aspire to. There's probably a lot more segments than that, but we see these three major brackets, in which we'll have an involvement. It differs each time, but we'll have an involvement in all of them.
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The interview touches on a number of other topics including diversity in eSports and the EA Code of Conduct for players. Make sure to give the whole article a look.
Tencent Continues to Throw Weight Around
Chinese investment company Tencent is a behemoth. A massive, unstoppable behemoth.
The internet company already owns League of Legends developer Riot Games, as well as a major portion of Epic Games, the publisher behind Gears of War and Unreal Tournament. Its catalog, however, is about to get even bigger.
First and foremost, Tencent now owns 84.3 percent of mobile gaming giant Supercell, the developers behind Clash of Clans and Boom Beach. According to the Wall Street Journal, Tencent cut a whopping $8.6 billion check for the company...and believe it or not, it may have even more money to throw around.
According to FloCombat.com's Jeremy Botter, Tencent is also lined up to buy the Ultimate Fighting Championship. In particular, Botter states, "a bid of $4.2 billion from a group consisting of WME-IMG, the Dalian Wanda Group, The Kraft Group and Tencent Holdings was accepted by Zuffa brass."
What this means for the future of either company is yet to be seen, but it should be interesting.
Overwatch Has Taken Over South Korea
From its glitzy, glamorous tournaments to the mainstream celebrity its top players achieve, South Korea has long been a haven for eSports. But while League of Legends and Starcraft have long dominated the nation's gaming scene, a new challenger has arrived. According to multiple sources, as told by DailyDot.com's Samuel Lingle, the new first-person shooter Overwatch has taken over Korean PC bangs in recent months.
PC bangs, Korea's gaming-focused internet cafes, function as something of a barometer for the whims of the Korean gaming market, and taking the top spot away from an entrenched favorite like LoL is a positive sign for the game going forward. As Lingle details, that doesn't necessarily mean that Overwatch is the most played game in Korea right now. Overwatch, unlike LoL, has a price tag that limits its accessibility.
Still, with Overwatch's competitive scene getting hot, don't be surprised if MVP or KT Rolster starts fielding championship-level teams.
Lawsuit Filed Against Valve Over Skin Betting
CounterStrike is one of the most watched games in eSports. Most of that is how the game is intense, exciting and competitive and rarely has long, boring drags of nothing. A little bit of it, though, is that the game has become popular among gamblers.
Skin betting, where players wager digital items that customize the appearance of their in-game characters (often called skins) on the outcome of pro games, has become a legitimate moneymaking endeavor and a controversial issue in eSports. Highlighting that is a class-action lawsuit being filed against CS:GO and Dota 2 publisher, Valve.
According to the suit (via DailyDot.com's Callum Leslie), Valve "has knowingly allowed an illegal online gambling market and has been complicit in creating, sustaining and facilitating that market." What's more, according to Leslie, "the suit also alleges that Valve directly profits from the skin gambling market."
This is a murky legal area that could have serious ramifications for the burgeoning field of eSports betting. Bloomberg estimates the skin-betting market is a $2.3 billion industry in CS:GO alone.
ESports lawyer Daniel Wallach reports the judge handling the case wants it done sooner rather than later and is calling for summary judgments by January 22, 2017. This is a case worth watching.
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