The post Valve cancels EPICENTER Major and Dota PIT Minor appeared first on Esport Bet.
]]>The news comes shortly after the firm indefinitely postponed the ESL One Los Angeles Dota2 Major due to the ongoing spread of coronavirus and the visa issues Dota2 teams have endured ahead of the third Major of 2019/20 DPC.
“After careful consideration of the current state and trajectory of the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as the health risk that this presents to competitors, staff and fans alike, we have made the difficult decision to cancel to the fourth Minor and Major tournaments of the DPC season,” read the announcement on the official Dota2 Twitter page.
“Given the high fluidity of the state of both the pandemic and geopolitical landscape, we will keep following the situation and decide how to approach the final Major and Minor of the season as the weeks progress.”
With this decision, Valve is supporting the idea of limited international travel in a bid to keep the fans, players and other individuals involved in Dota2 esports safe. That said, removing two DPC events will have serious consequences for those teams which have yet to secure their spot at The International 2020.
As it stands, only four teams have over 4,000 DPC points: TNC Predator (5,320), ViCi Gaming (5,100), Team Secret (4,950) and Evil Genuises (4,450). Filling the remaining eight spots in the top-12 are Invictus Gaming (3,100), Alliance (1,920), Team Liquid (1,820), business associates (960), beastcoast (820), Team Aster (440), Fnatic (400) and Chaos Esports Club (251.44).
Meanwhile, some prominent names in the Dota2 scene sit below the cut-off line, namely Royal Never Give Up (232.8), Gambit Esports (231), Natus Vincere (226), EHOME (216), Virtus.pro (172), Nigma (170), Ninjas in Pyjamas (151.2), Newbee (50), and even the reigning back-to-back TI champions, OG, who have accumulated only 100 DPC points after rebuilding their Dota2 roster earlier this year.
There are still two more Majors scheduled and 30,000 DPC points up for grabs, not including the last Minor tournament with 660 DPC points on offer. It is still unclear when and where the postponed ESL One Los Angeles Major will be played, while we can’t know for certain whether the last Major of the season (ONE Esports Singapore Major) will take place without any further complications.
The Singapore Major qualifier is scheduled to take place from May 17-22, with the Minor set to be played from June 9-13 and the Major tournament from June 20-28.
The cancelled OGA Dota Pit Minor 2020 was scheduled to be played from April 23-26, with EPICENTER 2020 initially slated to take place from May 2-10. Their cancellation gives teams a period of no international competitions up until the end of May when the qualifiers for the Singapore Major begin.
The scale of the COVID-19 outbreak could see all DPC tournaments cancelled – including The International 10, which is slated to take place in Stockholm, Sweden, in August.
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]]>The post Melbourne esports complex will be largest in Southern Hemisphere appeared first on Esport Bet.
]]>Located in the heart of the Central Business District (CBD), Fortress Melbourne is expected to open in the early months of 2020.
SEE ALSO: AUSTRALIAN ESPORTS BETTING SITES
The venture is the brainchild of technology developer Adrian Giles and former Village Roadshow executive Jon Satterley, the co-founders of Fortress Esports.
“Melbourne has become the epicentre for video gaming and esports culture with major events like Melbourne Esports Open and PAX Australia, so we’re excited to be opening our first flagship venue in Melbourne and offer Australians a video gaming entertainment space that they can enjoy all year round,” Satterley told reporters.
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The venue will cover more than 2,700 square metres over two floors of prime real estate at the Emporium Melbourne shopping centre on the corner of Lonsdale St and Swanston St.
The centrepiece of Fortress Melbourne will be a purpose-built esports arena with a retractable 200-seat grandstand, while the venue will house more than 160 networked PC gaming units.
Other features include a function room, two bars, a restaurant, esports training facilities, console gaming units, and large screens for live broadcasts of local and international esports tournaments.
“We want to make Fortress Melbourne the ultimate ‘home away from home’ for everyone, from casual gamers, competitive gamers and esports fanatics, to families and after work crowds,” Satterley added.
The news comes despite concerns over the short-term financial viability of the Australian esports industry.
HT&E recently announced it was shutting down its Gfinity Australia esports brand, with the media firm citing an “unsustainable market”.
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]]>The post Gfinity Australia to shut down esports operations appeared first on Esport Bet.
]]>The firm launched in 2017 when Here, There & Everywhere (HT&E), an Australian multimedia company, acquired the rights to operate under the UK-based Gfinity brand.
Instead of entering teams into existing esports leagues, HT&E developed the Gfinity Elite Series competitions for Counter-Strike, Rocket League and Street Fighter V.
Established esports organisations such as Avant Gaming, Chiefs, Ground Zero and Order participated in those events, while Gfinity operated two teams: Brisbane Deceptors and Sydney Roar.
The CS:GO and Street Fighter leagues closed after two years, however, while the newly launched Gfinity Supercars Eseries simulated racing competition will not last beyond its first year.
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In a statement released last week, HT&E claimed it had no choice but to focus on its core media operations as the Australian esports industry was maturing too slowly and generating too little revenue.
“Esports remains an exciting industry with significant global interest and activity and HT&E believes it will become mainstream and significant content-audience-commercial media in the long term,” said Ciaran Davis, chief executive of HT&E.
“But our absolute focus is on our core radio business and the economics of esports in the Australia market are yet to deliver sustainable, positive earnings.
“It is critical our investments deliver value for shareholders and with esports there is no certainty on when a positive contribution might be achieved.”
The latest HT&E financial reports list the closure of Gfinity Australia as a AUD $5.3 million loss.
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]]>The post Study shows gamers see link between loot boxes and gambling appeared first on Esport Bet.
]]>It also illustrated a link between high usage of in-game rewards and behaviours commonly associated with problem gambling.
The Centre for Gambling Research at the University of British Columbia surveyed 257 people about their online gaming activities and their awareness of loot boxes.
SEE ALSO: TRIBAL CASINO AT WAR WITH VALVE OVER LOOT BOXES
Two distinct groups were surveyed: one featuring 144 adult gamers from across North America, the other made up of 113 undergraduate students at UBC.
Some 86.2 per cent of the undergrads equated loot boxes with gambling, while 68.1 per cent of the grown-up gamers agreed.
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Researchers also discovered that 94.8 per cent of the students had opened a loot box in a game and 88.9 per cent of the other group had done the same.
Participants were also asked whether they had spent real money on loot boxes, with 60.3 per cent of the UBC group and 49.3 per cent of the others answering in the affirmative.
The study was published in the Addictive Behaviors peer-reviewed journal last month.
Gabriel Brooks, the paper’s chief author, said the study also unearthed a correlation between a person’s gaming expenditure and their likelihood of associating that activity with gambling.
“Typically we did have an association where the more one spent monthly, the more likely they were to endorse questions that associated with problematic gambling behaviour and/or problematic or risky loot box use,” he told reporters in Vancouver.
Brooks admitted the findings are far from conclusive and more research is needed before any serious campaign for legislative changes can be made.
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