CSDOTa2

11/06/2020

Last December, right after rejoining the League of Legends Championship Series, Evil Geniuses underwent an organizational rebranding, launching a new logo and moving away from the EG crest. But just six months later, they've announced a return back to their roots, revising the original crest to "pay homage to the org's history and look ahead to the future." Additionally, Evil Geniuses is also announcing a partnership with LG UltraGear, one of LG's newest gaming monitors, with further news on that partnership coming soon.

03/06/2020

MiBR has made a roster change after months of losses for the team and less than satisfactory events, but it’s not one that people were expecting. They’ve dismissed long-time coach Wilton "zews" Prado, rather than make any direct roster moves on the team, preferring instead to leave their core intact.

25/02/2020

Valve Is Suing A ‘Dota 2’ Tournament Organiser For Failing To Pay Winners And Staff

Valve has filed a lawsuit against Dota 2 tournament organizer GESC after the company failed to pay teams and staff involved with events held in 2018.

The lawsuit was filed in the High Court of the Republic of Singapore on April 8, with Valve VP of marketing, Doug Lombardi confirming to Dot Esports that the lawsuit had been filed by Valve in relation to the GESC Minors.

In 2018 GESC ran two Dota 2 Minor tournaments, GESC Indonesia and GESC Thailand. Both were Minors in the 2017/2018 Dota 2 Pro Circuit, meaning each tournament had a $300,000 prize pool and gave the top teams Dota Pro Circuit points, which were used to qualify for The International, the biggest tournament of the year with millions of dollars in prizes up for grabs. As far as tournaments go only TI and the Majors were more important than the Minors.

GESC Indonesia was won by American side Evil Geniuses, with VGJ.Thunder Natus Vincere and Infamous rounding out the top four. Also competing at the event was Fnatic, The Final Tribe, Digital Chaos and Indonesian side Rex Regum Qeon.

GESC Thailand was won another North American side, VGJ.Storm, with Chinese side Keen Gaming taking second and Team Secret and Fnatic splitting 3rd/4th place. Evil Geniuses and The Final Tribe also played in their second GESC event, with SG e-sports and Alpha Red rounding out the competition.

However, months after the events had taken place an open letter from a group including teams, players, talent and agencies that attended GESC events in 2018 was published claiming that over $750,000 had been unpaid. Companies such as Code Red Esports, Layerth and many broadcast talent were mentioned as being unpaid in the letter, along with the lack of prize money being paid out. As the events were part of the Dota Pro Circuit and endorsed by Valve, GESC had agreed to a 90 pay out window for the prize money, which had clearly been missed.

The current status of the lawsuit is unknown, and there is no info on how many, if any, of the parties waiting for payment have been paid. One party that was part of the initial open letter has confirmed that they are still waiting to be paid as of December 28th 2019.

However it seems unlikely that we will be seeing GESC holding any more events in the near future as Lombardi told Dot Esports that Valve has now discontinued its partnership with the tournament organiser.

“Our agreements with tournament operators require timely payment to participants,” said Lombardi. “We feel this is vital to the success of these events long term. When operators fail to meet those requirements, we follow up.”

18/02/2020

The best Dota 2 neutral items
Your guide to the best neutral items you can find in the Dota 2 jungle

What are the best Dota 2 neutral items? The 7.23 Outlanders update to Dota 2 stirred things up in a major way. Fans were getting a little too comfortable with a meta that hadn’t really shifted since before The International 2019 and were looking forward to a patch that would throw a few new heroes into the mix and fiddle around with various stats and items. Instead, the proverbial heavens opened and an unprecedented amount of brand new items fell from the sky, causing mass confusion and panic. Havoc Hammer. Ninja Gear. Mind Breaker. Who are you? Where’s my Stout Shield gone? Why is my carry trying to feed me jelly? Stay calm, gratefully accept the jelly into your gullet and let us explain the best Dota 2 neutral items you should look out for in game.

Dota 2 neutral items drop from jungle creeps from the seven minute mark onward. Neutral items are divided into tiers – Tier 1 items are the first type to drop after seven minutes in, joined by Tier 2 after 15 minutes, Tier 3 after 25 minutes, and Tier 4 after 40 minutes. There is a fifth tier, and if you make it all the way to 70 minutes you’ll be able to find Tier 5 items, which are powerful enough to hopefully bring about a swift end to the game so you can peel yourself out of your gaming chair and go look out of the window at the outside world.

How many neutral items are in Dota 2? There are a total of 58 Dota 2 neutral items, but only three neutral items from each tier can drop for your team, so let’s hope you get lucky and find one of the best ones. We’ve chosen our top items from each tier – the ones we would be happiest to receive in the majority of games – with the caveat that some items are great but conditional on whether you have the right heroes on your team to make best use of them.

13/02/2020

Epicenter To Host ‘Dota 2’ Major in Moscow

Epicenter has announced that it will host a Dota 2 Major in Moscow that will feature a $1 million prize pool.

The main event of the Epicenter Major 2020 will take place at the CSKA Arena in Moscow, Russia, between May 8 and 10 2020. 16 teams will compete for a share of the $1 million prize pool and all important Dota Pro Circuit points that will help teams qualify for The International 10 that is set to take place in August 2020.

The Epicenter Major will be the fourth Major of the 2019/2020 Dota Pro Circuit season, and will kick off with a group stage on May 2 and 3. Just like the other Majors of the season the group stage will determine which of the 16 teams start in the upper bracket of the competition and which will start in the lower bracket. After the group stage the double elimination bracket will take place across two stages. The first stage will take place in a closed studio between May 4 and 6, with the final stage of the competition taking place in front of a live crowd at the CSKA Arena between May 8 and 10.

Just like the other Majors of the 2019/2020 season there will be an open qualification system allowing any team to try and earn a place in the competition. Details of the open qualifiers will be revealed in February 2020. The closed qualifiers will kick off on March 29 and conclude on April 1. Qualifiers will be held for Europe, China, North America, South America, South East Asia and CIS. Another team will qualify for the Epicenter Major by winning the Minor that precedes it, which is yet to be announced.

04/02/2020

Dota Underlords is struggling to keep its players

On paper, Dota Underlords seems like a sure-fire hit: it’s Valve’s official spin on the massively popular Dota 2 mod Dota Auto Chess, which came out a year ago and quickly amassed millions of players. But in recent weeks, Underlords’ player count has dropped off precipitously.

As our sister site The Loadout reports, Dota Underlords initially saw about 200,000 concurrent players when it launched in June last year. That number has decreased fairly consistently since then, and according to Steam Charts its peak player count over the past 30 days was down to 18,664.

That’s despite Valve adding some significant changes to the original formula established by Dota Auto Chess. The game now has Underlords, a selection of heroes was ‘jailed’ each week (a concept that was discarded last month), and the early game phases have been significantly streamlined. Add to this the ability to play the Steam version of Underlords on your iOS or Android phone and it adds up to a pretty enticing version of the autobattler format. Even so, Dota Underlords continues to steadily bleed players.

01/02/2020

Dota Under

Valve’s latest effort in making videogames again is Dota Underlords, and after an Early Access launch in June 2019, it appears that the autobattler is about to hit version 1.0. The developers have announced that the beta season will officially come to a close soon, as Season 1 is now scheduled to “ship by the end of February.”

Season 1 has always been meant to mark the start of Dota Underlords’ full release, and it will bring a rework for the UI, the teased City Crawl mode, hero and item rotation, and the proper Dota Underlords Battle Pass. That latter item will perhaps be the most notable, as it will actually show us how Underlords is going to be monetised – the Proto Pass only offered a hint of what to expect.

This week’s update brings some balance changes – you can check those out on the official site – and those will continue through release. There’ll be one more major content update before Season 1 as well, which will add “one more Underlord to round the game out.”

Much has been made of Dota Underlords’ player count drop since launch, though it’s worth noting that the game remains well within Steam’s top 100 titles by player count, and has already outlasted Artifact by a substantial margin. Either way, Valve plans to “get the word out to a wider audience” heading into launch.lords leaves Early Access in February

21/01/2020

NA`VI JUNIOR ADD M0NESY ON TRIAL

Na`Vi have announced the addition of 14-year-old Ilya "m0NESY" Osipov to their academy squad on trial.

The Russian youngster joins Na`Vi Junior after impressing for his previous teams, NewBALLS and SG.pro, in two editions of the HardCup, which are held in Moscow, and in the CIS Esports Pro Championship online tournament.

He will join four other players, aged between 16 and 20, in contesting for the final two spots in the starting lineup of Na`Vi Junior, a project that was initially announced by Natus Vincere as part of the organisation's Esports Camp.

In a statement, Na`Vi Junior coach Amiran "aMi" Rehviashvili spoke of his delight at seeing m0NESY join the project and revealed that he has been following the 14-year-old "for a long time".

"At the age of 14, he has qualities that will allow him to become a champion: his feel for the game and dedication are impressive," the Ukrainian coach added.

"Due to age restrictions, he can not compete in tournaments right now, but it is very important that he learns the proper knowledge by now. I am sure that practicing with Na`Vi Junior will help him reach his potential."

With the addition of m0NESY, Na`Vi Junior are:

Russia Kirill "Gospadarov" Gospadarov
Ukraine Ivan "KAPACHO" Koplenko
Ukraine Valeriy "B1T" Vakhovskiy

Russia Eugene "Aunkere" Karyat (trial)
Russia Ilya "m0NESY" Osipov (trial)
Ukraine Alexey "T**a" Topchienko (trial)
Ukraine Andrey "Whitesmith" Saribekyan (trial)
Ukraine Rodion "fear" Smyk (trial)

Ukraine Amiran "aMi" Rehviashvili (coach)

20/01/2020

TOP 20 PLAYERS OF 2019: XYP9X (14)

Andreas "Xyp9x" Højsleth comes in at No. 14 in our ranking of the top 20 players of 2019, powered by Xtrfy and LOOT.BET, making this the third year in a row in which he makes the cut.

Xyp9x launched his career mere months before CS:GO came out, but, unlike his longtime teammates Nicolai "device" Reedtz and Peter "dupreeh" Rasmussen, he came from 1.6 instead of CS:Source. Not having been ingrained in the scene, Xyp9x was quick to jump into Valve’s new game with CPLAY before joining the Scandinavian roster of fnatic with players from Denmark, Sweden, and Norway. Xyp9x was one of the standouts on that team, which had big 1.6 names in it including Michael "Friis" Jørgensen, Martin "trace" Heldt, and Andreas "MODDII" Fridh.

18/01/2020

SPROUT SIGN DYCHA

Sprout have completed the signing of Polish rifler Paweł "dycha" Dycha, the German organisation has announced.

The 22-year-old will fill the gap left by Nils "k1to" Gruhne after the German player signed for BIG alongside Florian "syrsoN" Rische. With Tomáš "oskar" Šťastný having been unveiled last week as syrsoN's replacement, dycha is the final piece of the puzzle in the new Sprout lineup.

dycha has been out of action for a month since he parted ways with ARCY following a turbulent period in which his former organisation of Aristocracy lost financial backing, which led to a six-day stint in the orgless ARCY before deciding to leave.

The Polish player joins Sprout off the back of an impressive individual year, which saw the player average a 1.17 rating, including a standout LAN performance at Games Clash Masters 2019, where he finished as the event's best player with a 1.31 rating.

Sprout will make their first appearance with their new signings at United Masters League Season 2, where they will face off against BIG in an anticipated online quarter-final matchup on January 13, which will see syrsoN and k1to take on their former team. Meanwhile, Timo "Spiidi" Richter's men are set to make their LAN debut at DreamHack Open Leipzig, which will be held from January 24-26.

17/01/2020

MICHU: "BOTH PLAYERS AND ORGANIZATIONS ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR THE CURRENT STATE OF THE POLISH SCENE

In an interview with HLTV.org, Michał "MICHU" Müller shed some light on his time in Virtus.pro and revealed details about his future after parting ways with the ex-Virtus.pro squad.

Two unfruitful years with Virtus.pro have come to an end for MICHU, who announced his departure from the Polish team shortly after it was dropped by the Russian organization. The 23-year-old rifler

MICHU, who averaged a 1.11 rating in 2019, says that his individual form is a result of hard work, but that "it's hard to be fully satisfied" when the team results are underwhelming. Talking about the struggling Polish scene, MICHU says that players need to "start working" instead of just talking, pointing at Karol "rallen" Rodowicz and Paweł "dycha" Dycha as good examples.

The Polish rifler still didn't experience playing at a Major, so he noted that as one of his goals for 2020. To get there, MICHU is ready to play in an international team, as he has been taking English lessons for a year, and relocate outside of Poland if necessary.

When were you informed that Virtus.pro was not going to continue with the Polish lineup? Were you caught off guard or was the move expected as your contracts were running out?

As a team we weren't sure about our future till the very end, actually we found out about it after the news about new roster had been released. We weren't surprised though, there were a lot of rumors a few days prior, so we realized that the organization could eventually do this, but we didn't think it would happen before our contracts expired.

Do you think the organization's decision was a fair one? Was there more this team was capable of doing if you continued under the banner?

The decision was absolutely fair. Our recent results were really poor. Losing to many weaker teams, getting eliminated in the first rounds of open qualifiers and losing our spot in ESL Polish Championship are only some of the reasons. In my opinion, there was nothing more we could do, there were too many different views and characters inside the team in order to win international trophies.

16/01/2020

TOP 20 PLAYERS OF 2019: JKS (15)

In 15th place of the Top 20 players of 2019 ranking, powered by Xtrfy and LOOT.BET, Justin "jks" Savage makes history for his region as the first player from Australia to earn a place in the list after spearheading his team's success over the course of the year.

15/01/2020

INVITES FOR IEM KATOWICE CLOSED QUALIFIERS REVEALED

Following the announcement of the directly invited teams, ESL has revealed the invited closed qualifier teams for IEM Katowice 2020.

The names of the teams that were invited to the Asian, European, North American, and Oceanic closed qualifiers for IEM Katowice have been revealed, with some big names and new rosters finding their way onto the team lists.

In Europe, FaZe will have to go through the online qualifier to earn a spot at IEM Katowice, as will G2 and ENCE. Illuminar got a spot in the closed qualifier by winning the Polish Championship, while Heroic and ARCY made it through the first open qualifier. Two more teams are yet to be decided through the second open qualifier before the closed qualifier kicks off on January 14.

IEM Katowice Europe Closed Qualifier team list:

Europe FaZe
Finland ENCE
Poland ARCY
Europe Open Qualifier #2
France G2
Poland Illuminar
Denmark Heroic
Europe Open Qualifier #2
In North America, a few new rosters will debut in the qualifier, such as Complexity and Gen.G, albeit the latter will not feature Hansel "BnTeT" Ferdinand as he will be helping TYLOO in the Asian qualifier before moving over to his new team. Brazilian sides MIBR, FURIA, and INTZ will also be competing for a spot at the event, with only the best team in North America earning a spot in Poland.

IEM Katowice North America Closed Qualifier team list:

Brazil MIBR
United States Cloud9
Brazil INTZ
North America Chaos
Brazil FURIA
Europe Complexity
United States Riot Squad
United States Gen.G
Asia and Oceania have one slot each at the final event, with the competition being more straightforward than in Europe and North America. TYLOO, ViCi, and Renegades are the biggest favorites for spots at IEM Katowice 2020.

IEM Katowice Asia Closed Qualifier team list:

China TYLOO
Mongolia AUGUST
Thailand Alpha Red
Philippines Bren
China ViCi
China R-Stars
China OneThree
Mongolia Mazaalai
IEM Katowice Oceania Closed Qualifier team list:

Australia Renegades
Australia AVANT
Australia Ground Zero
Australia ex-Genuine
Australia ORDER
Australia Paradox
Australia S*F
Australia Airborne
Finally, the team list for the $500,000 event in Katowice, Poland will look as follows:

Denmark Astralis
Europe mousesports
France Vitality
Russia Natus Vincere
Sweden NiP
Europe EU Qualifier
Europe EU Qualifier
Europe EU Qualifier
Sweden fnatic
United States Liquid
United States Evil Geniuses
Australia 100 Thieves
Kazakhstan Virtus.pro
North America NA Qualifier
Asia Asia Qualifier
Oceania Oceania Qualifier

14/01/2020

DREAMHACK OPEN LEIPZIG INVITES UNVEILED

DreamHack has announced all four invited teams for their upcoming Open circuit event held in Leipzig.

DreamHack Open Sevilla champions North, who earlier on Tuesday announced the renewal of Markus "Kjaerbye" Kjærbye's contract, Virtus.pro, Renegades and BIG have all received direct invites to participate at the German event, which will be held from January 24-26.

The four sides join Sprout on the list of participants for the event, with the German team having secured a spot after winning the ESL Meisterschaft Winter Finals. This leaves just three vacant slots, to be filled via the European and North American regional qualifiers, scheduled for January 12.

14/01/2020

TEAMONE CONFIRM LOAN DEAL FOR FELPS

TeamOne have announced that they have recruited João "felps" Vasconcellos in a loan transfer from MIBR.

The 23-year-old will take one of the two spots that had been vacant since Bruno "bit" Lima and Victor "bld" Rocha were released by the Brazilian team at the end of 2019.

felps will see this challenge as an opportunity to kick-start his career after falling down the pecking order in MIBR. He spent just five months with the team before being loaned out to Luminosity in a deal that saw Lucas "LUCAS1" Teles move in the opposite direction.

14/01/2020

14/01/2020