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DreamHack Cluj recorded 25mn viewers

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DreamHack Open Cluj-Napoca had a unique viewership figure of over 25 million, the Swedish company has revealed.

The final major of 2015 came to a close on November 1, with EnVyUs scooping the top prize of $100,000 after seeing off Natus Vincere 2-0 in the grand final of the tournament.

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Over the course of the event, there were over 85 million sessions across all streaming platforms, and over 25 million unique viewers tuned in, making it the second most watched CS:GO event of all time, behind ESL One Cologne, which had a global audience of 27 million people.

Viewership peaked during the final day of the event, when almost 1 million people were watching the streams simultaneously.

“Cluj-Napoca will be one of the most memorable CS:GO and event experiences in esports history,” DreamHack Business Development Director Tomas Lyckedal said in a statement.

“As we go forward, we’ll see this event as a milestone event in both DreamHack’s and PGL’s development.”

Below you can find the viewership numbers in detail, provided by DreamHack:

  • Views/started streams: 85,083,044
  • Unique views/visitors: 25,090,086
  • Hours watched: 30,837,479
  • Peak concurrent viewers: 985,052

India’s strong line-up for TWC, expectations are huge to top the group

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Roster for The World Championship (TWC) CS:GO was announced late last night and it was a moment of joy for the community as most number of selected players were favourites. Team India’s lineup has, RiTz, sMx, One, Manan, MithilF. They face Palestine and Kyrgyzstan in the online qualifiers.

Team India under guidance of team manager, Karthik Rao will be playing in the TWC Asian qualifiers today at 3:30 & 4:30 and hopes are high because of the experience some of the players hold. We have been covering the news on how tough and technical the decision was and it took a couple of months to actually decide what players will be fit to represent the nation.

Team Wolf at ESL One Colonge
Team Wolf at ESL One Colonge

Team overview:

Ritesh ‘RiTz’ Shah, IGL
Jigar ‘sMx’ Mehta, Entry fragger
Mithil ‘MithilF’ Sawant, Lurker
Manan ‘Manan’ Bhat, Support
Bharat ‘one’ Reddy, AWP

Meanwhile the announcements of the roster were delayed, we were lurking into what could be the reason behind the delayed reveal and in a conversation with Karthik, we were informed that the players were not only selected on the basis of the skills and experience but also, the fact that latency will be a huge drawback, players with talent and skill will also be required to check their latency before being named in the final roster.

A matter of fact that the games will be played on Germany’s CKRAS servers, the latency for Asian teams, specially Indians will be a huge drawback because of the lack of connectivity infrastructure.

We still expect India to be the best at their Group and be among the 3 LAN finalists from our region. We will be hosting a giveaway for our readers. Tell us in comments below, Who do you think will be the BEST player overall? All the correct answers will get prizes. No, really!

Play like a Russian in CS:GO competitive

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So, you have just bought CS go and played a few rounds in casual or some other gamemode. You want to learn to play competitively and who is better at teamwork and communication than Russians?

Good thing this isn’t call of duty then

Grab yourself some beer and sit back, you are about to become the ultimate competitive Russian player.

Preparations

Fuel

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Remember, the most important part of being a Russian in CS:GO is to constantly use the phrase ‘Cyka Blyat’. If your team mate tells you a strategy, immediately reply with ‘Cyka Blyat’. If you do not keep Blyat’ing those bitches, you should quit CS:GO and go play pokemon.

First rule of playing competitive in a true Russian fashion: Never be sober. Make sure you stock up on any stereotypical beverage of your choosing.

Minimap

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The minimap in CS GO is obsolete, it will only confuse you and provide unnecessary information such as the enemy’s position. If you want to truly play competitively, you mustn’t allow yourself be misguided by mystical question marks and Xs. So, look around for an adequately sized picture of Vladimir Putin wielding a gun or scuba diving and tape it to the upper left corner of your monitor.

Appearance

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If you haven’t set up your steam profile page yet, don’t. You are already well on your way to looking more Russian in competitive lobbies.
In case you have set up a profile, you must replace whatever your avatar picture is right now with a random generic barely clothed hot girl. It will make you seem more mature and seasoned to the enemy team, and help inspire confidence amongst your teammates.

The first round, tips on teamplay

Warmup king

Once you have found a lobby and clicked the green ACCEPT button (at the very last second, of course) the game should start. You have 30 seconds of warm-up depending on how long it takes your computer to load the map. The first thing you do when you join a server is ask if there are any Russians on (русские естъ?). This essential piece of information will help you know your enemy better, and communicate with your only other Russian teammate in your native language, muting the rest of your team.As soon as you spawn, open the menu and buy AWPs.Make sure to buy enough AWPs for your entire team because while these 30 seconds of warm up do not matter in terms of the outcome of the match or even your personal score, it is your duty as a Russian to dominate your enemies at all times.

The pistol round

Deagle Pistol Round

Your teammates may insist on playing the pistol round with the starting pistol, saving their money for later, but you won’t make the same mistake. You’ve been playing counter-strike back when it was just a mod for Half-Life, so you know something they don’t: The Deagle is clearly the most powerful weapon. Obviously there is no reason Valve would balance the weapons for this modern, new version of CS, they’d just keep the same old unbalanced weapon stats and pick out a few weapons that work and throw in the rest for filler. Obviously.

Now that you have your deagle, make sure you pull out a knife and run as far away from your teammates as possible, you don’t want them dragging you down. Once your inevitable death occurs, because, you know, using the deagle against more than one enemy at once rarely ends with you still breathing, make sure you use voice chat to notify your teammates where exactly you died (in russian of course), then proceed to blast out russian pop music through your proffessional quality microphone.

Mid and late game3

whats the point?

Once the first round is over, you’ll have to start saving up for an AWP. Now, maybe you don’t think the map you’re on is appropiate for an AWP. You’re wrong and you shouldn’t think so much. Play with your starting pistol for as long as you need to get an AWP, even if no one on your team is saving their money. Once you have the AWP, proceed to rush in headfirst and die before getting a single kill and giving the enemy an AWP and losing even more money for your team.

This post originally appeared on Steam forums.

Scams and shady organization are killing the Indian CSGO scene: Ritesh ‘RiTz’ Shah

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Over the past decade, Ritesh ‘RiTz’ Shah has been synonymous not just with the Indian Counter Strike scene, but the gaming community as a whole. After attending several international tournaments representing ATE Gaming during the CS 1.6 era, RiTz is one of the few veteran professionals, who successfully transitioned to CS:GO.

After attending the Electronic Sports World Cup (ESWC) with Team ATE Gaming, the Mumbai-based rifler consolidated his place as India’s most successful CS player, by attending ESL One Cologne 2014 with Team WOLF.

Commercial highs also came knocking on his door, after he was part of an advertisement promoting  Lenovo’s range of gaming laptops. However, it’s not been a smooth ride for the ace marksman, since the second half of 2014.

Several team and roster changes saw him go through a slump of sorts. But as they say, form is temporary and class is permanent, RiTz with the rest of team NeckBREAK blew their opposition away by comfortably qualifying for the ESL Asian qualifiers.

With the team set to depart this month to battle for Asian supremacy, TalkEsport sat down with RiTz to know more about their preparations of the event.

Q. There was a massive roster reshuffle in the Indian scene prior to the event, your thoughts on that?

Ahh. The money making question. Let me start from the beginning, 2014 was the worst year for me and my teammates (Wolf). We had lost almost all the major events in India and everyone in the team including me were frustrated and hence, we decided to split. Ibra and Mithil planned to make a team, which would gel better. However, later on even that didn’t work out for them and they started losing.

At the same time, I was playing for brutality for a month and things again were not in favor for me or my team.

When all of this was happening, Krissh wanted to play for the very first lineup of CS:GO with 1 change, which was manan instead of smx. This deal was almost confirmed, but Tejas ‘Ace’ Savant had a dream of quitting csgo and focus on his future.

Him quitting made us a little weak as he was the backbone of our lineup. So we took smx and we were finally ready.

We were struggling but at the same time, but we were learning a lot. We were getting a little better, after every loss ,but misfortune struck us again in the form of Krissh getting a VAC ban, almost killing our team.

We all tried very hard to get him unbanned because I knew he was innocent, but we had to give up at some point.

Then I tried my best to get ‘Come back Ace Savant,’ but his answer was NO. I feel that way because he has some personal issue with me.

We wanted a better teammate and we gave Machinegun an offer, only a madman would refuse. He accepted and finally we have a non-stop winning streak. I do not believe there is anything unethical or unprofessional about giving Machinegun an offer, because this is how any professional sport works.

Q. Any specific plans/strategies for the Asian qualifiers? Which team do you guys fear the most?

Honestly, we do not fear any team. We want to go in this tournament with a very positive and a fearless attitude. We will give our best and win hearts if we fail to win games. We are well prepared and we will not miss this opportunity.

Q. You personally have been a part of the CS scene, since its inception, what are the changes you have seen over the years?

Honestly, I haven’t seen any changes. In fact, I feel like the scene has deteriorated from what it was a few years ago. During WCG we were used to seeing about 52 teams participate from Mumbai itself. The participation isn’t even close to that now.

Everyone back then was keen on travelling to LAN events and competing. Everything happening now is online and people just want to comfortably sit at home and play with bad ping and packet loss.

We have had barely any good LAN events in this past year. Personally, I feel that CS is not a game you play online. You have to compete on LAN to actually feel what the game is all about.

A lot of scams and shady organizations I believe are killing this scene. The day I retire I will make sure I give you all the information and names of everyone that have fucked us over in the past. I will also do my best to prevent what has happened to us from happening to the young cs blood of the country.

Q. Thoughts on your Mongolian import, Machinegun and his performances?

He is an amazing teammate. Me, my team and our management are extremely happy with his performances. It is not easy at times to communicate with him but we are working on it and will overcome this hurdle as well.

Honestly, though adding Machinegun to the roster just makes my job more difficult. Astarr, Mithilf and Machine are like a tornado. They tend to want to destroy whatever comes in their path.

But, I as a leader have to control, which direction this tornado moves in. It is not an easy task but if I dont do my job well I dont think the result will be the same. Can you imagine the damage a controlled tornado can do?

Q. Who do you think is the best player in India right now?

Mithil without the shadow of a doubt. Just in case you weren’t aware, Mithil is physically disabled (He can only hear through one ear).

What people can’t do with 2 ears, he does with just one. And you know how important sound is in CS:GO. I adore his dedication to the team and the game. He has the ability to make his team win single-handedly at any point in the game.

Q. Any particular role models from the international scene?

Definitely, Nikola “NiKolinho” Kovac . That guy is a beast.

 Q. What next for Team Necbreak, in terms of practice and regional tournaments?

Wins. A lot of wins. Wins everywhere!! The management of Neckbreak has done a lot for us. Me and my team will make sure I give them returns.

Team Nepal’s unfortunate draw at The World Championship CS:GO didn’t discourage them, will work even harder assures the manager

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Earlier today, E-frag.net released the group draws of the upcoming The World Championship CS:GO’s sixth qualifier for South Asian teams which had a total of 14 teams competing for 3 available slots and Nepal being drawn on the stronger group.

In a discussion over the impact the draws will make on the performances, Dipesh Tulhadar, Manager, Team Nepal quoted: “I still belive in my boys, they will make Nepal proud.”

Team Nepal was recently drawn and organized in the group along side the much stronger opponents Indonesia and Philippines, and they will be playing their matches on 1st of September, facing first Indonesians and the latter in their next match. Dipesh, who is a cafe owner at Nepal and looks after the infrastructural support and equipment for Team Nepal was unshaken by the announcements of opponents who feels that their passion towards the game will help them play a lot better, even after such strong rosters.

The now final roster of Team Nepal: hzY, GhOsT, LiaR, VerTeX, envY, (with Cake and Zeref as subs)

During the announcement of Team Nepal, as one of the 14 South-Asian teams competing for The World Championship, we interviewed Pranjalraj Ghimire, IGL, Team Nepal and got his optimistic views on the participation. On asking questions about the draws he quoted: “I will surely work on the feedback on what we did right/wrong during our game which will only make us better.”

“We want to see how good we are in comparison to the other nations, I think Philippines and Indonesia will be the perfect opponents to test our skills.”, added Pranjal ‘hzY’ Ghimire, IGL, Team Nepal.

The inability of India’s CS:GO community to handle loss

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Team NeckBreak might have crashed and burned at the ESL One Asian qualifiers, but their loss has yet again highlighted the Indian CS:GO community’s inability to handle loss as a stepping stone to success.  Well, a specific portion of the scene at least.

For starters, we are yet to come to terms with the fact that the country is not a powerhouse in the Counter Strike Global Offensive scene. We attend one International LAN a year if we are lucky and for us to consistently perform against teams such as Renegades, who have defeated professional North American teams, it is close to impossible.

Necbreak CSGO

The various aspects we can learn from the European experiences of these teams should be our foremost goal.

In an international forum, members of the community spoke about how Renegades’ rose from the ashes to defeat tier two stalwarts in the competitive CS:GO scene.

However, what we fail to notice is the combination of infrastructure, financial backing and legitimacy the Australian scene has received over the years. In fact, members such as Chad ‘Spunj’ Burchill have been part of the E-sports extravaganza that was the Championship Gaming Series (CGS).

Even during ex-VOX’s most fruitful tenure, which saw them reach the knockout stages of ESL Katowice, they were led by former Sydney Underground star Azad ‘topguN’ Orami. The other Australian team, Immunity is spearheaded by Iain ‘Snyper’ Turner, who was the finest CS 1.6 player from the continent.

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The number of International LAN’s Renegades has been invited to in 2014/2015 alone is more than the amount attended by different Indian teams, since the game’s inception. So, why do we even compare them on the same tangent?

A personal attack on NB manager Sid Joshi indicated the standard we are setting for CS GO’s fight towards being a sport in the country. If the creation of memes does actually de-motivate members, who are trying to develop the community in a positive manner then it will be far more degrading for the scene as compared to a 16-0 loss against a top team.

Personal Attacks in the form of meme were doing rounds on the CS:GO community.

*images removed*

There is a reason why we were seeded bottom of the group because we were not expected to defeat teams such as Renegades. It’s time we come to terms with the fact that we are a tier 2 Asian CS:GO nation and these tournaments will act us building blocks for us to get better.

It’s time we unite as a community to back our teams and give them constructive criticism, instead of involving their personal lives into the professional realm.

The inability of India’s CS:GO community to handle loss

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Team NeckBreak might have crashed and burned at the ESL One Asian qualifiers, but their loss has yet again highlighted the Indian CS:GO community’s inability to handle loss as a stepping stone to success. Well, a specific portion of the scene at least.

For starters, we are yet to come to terms with the fact that the country is not a powerhouse in the Counter Strike Global Offensive scene. We attend one International LAN a year, if we are lucky and for us to consistently perform against teams such as Renegades, who have defeated professional North American teams, it is close to impossible.

Team NeckBREAK CSGO

The various aspects we can learn from the European experiences of these teams should be our foremost goal.

In an international forum, members of the community spoke about how Renegades’ rose from the ashes to defeat tier two stalwarts in the competitive CS:GO scene.

However, what we fail to notice is the combination of infrastructure, financial backing and legitimacy the Australian scene has received over the years. In fact, members such as Chad ‘Spunj’ Burchill have been part of the E-sports extravaganza that was the Championship Gaming Series (CGS).

Even during ex-VOX’s most fruitful tenure, which saw them reach the knock out stages of ESL Katowice, they were led by former Sydney Underground star Azad ‘topguN’ Orami. The other Australian team, Immunity is spearheaded by Iain ‘Snyper’ Turner, who was the finest CS 1.6 player from the continent.

The number of International LAN’s Renegades has been invited to in 2014/2015 alone is more than the amount attended by different Indian teams, since the game’s inception. So, why do we even compare them on the same tangent?

A personal attack on NB manager Sid Joshi indicated the standard we are setting for CS GO’s fight towards being a sport in the country. If the creation of memes do actually de-motivate members, who are trying to develop the community in a positive manner than it will be far more degrading for the scene as compared to a 16-0 loss against a top team.

Troll Meme on Sid Joshi, NeckBREAK

Personal Attacks in the form of meme were doing rounds on the CS:GO community.

There is a reason why we were seeded bottom of the group because we were not expected to defeat teams such as Renegades. It’s time we come to terms with the fact that we are a tier 2 Asian CS:GO nation and these tournaments will act as building blocks for us to get better.

It’s time we unite as a community to back our teams and give them constructive criticism, instead of involving their personal lives into the professional realm.

Unikrn bags another $7million of investment to expand further

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More of what comes not as a surprise. Unikrn (pronounced as ‘unicorn’) reportedly raised a $7mn of funding from Binary capital, which totals to the company initial capital hit $10mns. Mark Cuban, previously invested into the organization.

unikrn-screen

Aside of CSGOLounge and DotA2Lounge separately, Unikrn lists all the major eSports game under one hood and allows the gambling to be non-distracted and smooth.

The startup, led by a very famous and active entrepreneur Rahul Sood, which not to be forgotten is also one of the Board Members at Razer.  Unikrn basically helps people place bets on upcoming eSports matches, such as League of Legends, Dota 2, and Starcraft 2 which has a large professional scenes.

Betting is a term often listed below the ‘illegal activities’ in most of the countries, and doesn’t allow gambling of real money. Unikrn however, has a proactive solution to that which allows it to focus less on the gambling laws by having the operating partner Tabcorp, an Australian company, at their ventures.

North-American Team IBP Accused Of Being Guilty In Cheating Scandal In CS:GO Competitive Scene

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In a reportedly another cheating scandal by top North American Counter Strike roaster, iBUYPOWER (ibp), this time the cheating wasn’t involved with third party softwares, but, intentionally loosing to the other team with distant odds to win big on bettings.

The incident, being the match played between ibp and NetcodeGuides.com which was on 21st of August 2014 of CEVO Professional Season 5, where iBUYPOWER’s strange in-game strategies and tactics lead to the spectators and other professionals being suspicious and smelt, sandbagging.
Leaving no questions unanswered, the team and their management managed to escape the suspicious environment by rulling out the reasons of loosing an unexpected match with a similar unpredictable score line of 16-4.

‘ShahZAM’ from NetcodeGuides.com revealed before the match to a journalist (name undisclosed) about where the match was going to fall, on whose part.

The screenshots from CSGOLounge and the private conversations also shocked the entire community with shame. Most bets in the Counter-Strike group happen on the site Cs:go Lounge, where players wager in-amusement things with true esteem on matches. On account of data gave by the site, we can affirm that Pham put down a few vast wagers on the amusement, actually set so far as to make various records (known as “smurfs”) singularly with the end goal of wagering on this diversion. At the time Cs:go Lounge worker Courtney “Nectar” Timpson had his suspicions and had started his own particular examination concerning the onrushing of sizable wagers encompassing the diversion. He was astounded to find that most of the huge winning wagers on that amusement prompted Pham or individuals on Pham’s Steam companions list.

 

Duc “cud” Pham, a Vietnamese student in the U.S., has been around the North American professional scene for a while and even played in LunatiK eSports when they won ESEA’s Counter-Strike: Global Offensive Main Division 15th season. He supplements his income through skins betting and trading—his Steam account advertises the sale of keys for the virtual cases that the game “drops” for players.

“He had nine smurf accounts that he controlled directly that all placed the maximum value bet that they could, yielding a return of $1193.14 value each. Some of these accounts were created specifically to bet on this match. At the time I thought it was strange because he wasn’t much of a ‘YOLO’ better. By that I mean, he would sometimes bet on the underdog but never before this much and never with his smurfs.”

After all these massacres, the latest development which revealed that the match was thrown away by iBUYPOWER intentionally as they made $ 1200 per account on their 9 smurf accounts, shocking isn’t it? Although the management fails to answer the questions at their convenience, the screenshots thus prove that the match was intentionally lost in the concern of winning huge amounts from bettings.

Team SoLoMid now world’s highest paid CS:GO eSports team

Yes, this is no joke. The former Danish roster, Team Dignitas have now officially joined Team SoLoMid and are reportedly being paid the highest salary comparitively to any other CSGO team in the world.

The best in the world of League of Legends, Team SoLoMid (TSM) recently acquired Diginitas esports’ CSGO division to form a new and strong organization under their management.

Team Dignitas

According to a very close source, the team is the highest paid Esports team ever and no other team in the world has been paid something like that which also includes the maginificient laws and clauses. The players from SoLoMid will be free to take their share from the tournament money without being sharing their revenue with the organization as of now. They will also be entitled and set free to have some in the buckets through Twitch streaming.

In a statement to Daily Dot, the source revealed:

“The players are being paid $3,000 a month each, which is a vast amount in Counter-Strike terms,” the person added. “The teams that have been considered the best in the world haven’t even earned that kind of money. They have also been promised 100 percent of the Valve sticker money, which if they were to get into a legends pack could be as much as $400,000 divided between the team.”

Effecting from 1st of February’15, TSM will be a global identity having a CS:GO team. Team SoLoMid is widely recognized as the most sucessfull Esports organziation, they are also known for making their League of Legend players professional steamers which also helped them with consistent earnings.