Category: E-Sport

Image credit: Helena Kristiansson, ESL FACEIT Group It’s the end of an era in Counter-Strike as veteran pro player Gabriel “FalleN” Toledo announces his retirement. FURIA‘s IGL will compete for the remainder of 2026 before ending his 20-year run. The retirement was announced on-stage at IEM Rio, with FalleN making an emotional speech in front of a massive crowd of fans. “Nothing prepares you for what I’m about to say today,” the Professor said, translated by ESL. “I thought many nights and many mornings about what exactly to say. […] I decided at the end of 2026 I would do…

Image SourceEsports betting has been gaining traction in recent years, and it is poised to become the next big thing in the world of online gaming. The rising popularity of esports competitions, combined with the increasing availability of online gambling platforms, is driving the growth of the esports betting industry. Esports, known as electronic sports, is a type of competitive video gaming in which professional players and teams compete in various games. Tournaments and leagues have been around for decades, but only recently they started to attract a wider audience. In fact, some of the biggest esports events have drawn millions…

Image credit: Valve There has always been a bit of a stereotype that FPS lobbies are filled with toxic 12-year-olds using a bunch of racial slurs and screaming obnoxiously until you are forced to mute them, destroying the team’s communication and strategy. I have personally run into this many times, so I’d be willing to believe that kids and tweens are the most toxic age group in competitive gaming. But I’d be wrong. FACEIT recently studied 155,680 bans on the platform over the past 12 months and found that the most toxic players in Counter-Strike 2 are much older than…

Image Credit: Riot Games League of Legends players can’t seem to let go of the concept that women have a menstrual cycle. Most recently, an apparent coach claimed he tracks his duo partner’s menstrual cycle to see when she plays better. In the controversial — and hopefully satirical — post, Tony Chau broke down performance statistics from 147 ranked games. Based on the collected data, Chau concluded that his duo parter, yuulu, plays better when she’s not on her period. “Tracking the period cycles of your league duos can lead to increased win rates,” he tweeted. “We’re not just playing…

Image Credit: The Slick Tony Street Fighter 6 has often seemed like it’s one fighting game title that’s broken free from the chains of the “struggling FGC” stereotype. The Capcom Cup 12 is a massive tournament with a massive prize pool. However, that prize pool comes at a high cost to the Street Fighter scene at large. The FGC recently dug into Capcom’s rules for its Capcom Pro Tour, which is the season leading up to the Capcom Cup. There are plenty of regional and international tournaments for players to compete in, aiming to climb the leaderboard and qualify. However,…

Gender-based discrimination in esports is often framed as a problem the industry is slowly outgrowing, and, in some ways, that is true. The scene is more diverse than it once was, and more people are willing to speak up when faced with discrimination. Yet situations like the one recently shared by Ève “Colomblbl” Monvoisin and Maya “Caltys” Henckel from the League of Legends scene show that the industry is far from being inclusive. In March, Colomblbl explained that she had been rejected from a team because she is a woman. Shortly after, Caltys shared a similar story from earlier in…

Image Credit: Adela Sznajder, Riot Games In May 2025, VALORANT Game Changers star and VCT player Ava “florescent” Eugene was accused of sexual assault by a X (Twitter) user (account now deleted) on behalf of a girl named “Brick.” This was followed by Flor’s former Shopify Rebellion Gold teammates calling her behavior “reprehensible,” stating that they believed the victim. Fast forward to March 2026 and Riot Games has cleared the Canadian VALORANT player of any Esports Global Code of Conduct violations. “This was a personal matter, and no sufficient evidence was found,” said the publisher while announcing her eligibility to participate in Riot-sanctioned…

Image Credit: Cloud9 / YouTube It’s interesting because Cloud9 is actually not the worst in VALORANT esports, yet it seems to get the most hate. Despite being 14th out of 48 teams in the 2026 power ranking, Cloud9 is often a topic of discussion due to its inability to qualify for an international event. This led podcaster Andre Hopkins to interview Head Coach Ian “Immi” Harding about the team’s shortcomings. But he didn’t seem too bothered. Keep Reading “How do you fix EMEA?” The VCT EMEA is falling behind, but can it catch up? “Increased focus on fandom”: Jake Sin…

Park “Ruler” Jae-hyuk’s tax controversy has become one of those stories that, at first glance, looks smaller than the reaction surrounding it. A mountain out of a mole hill. After all, the taxes were ultimately paid! There’s no lurid criminal indictment attached to the case in the way casual readers might imagine when they hear the phrase “tax evasion.” And Ruler, in his own statement, has insisted there was no deliberate concealment of income, describing the matter instead as a mishandled arrangement involving payments to his father and stock held under his father’s name. Yet in South Korea, this has…

Image Credit: Michał Konkol/Riot Games VCT EMEA Stage 1 has just kicked off this week. The tournament sees twelve teams compete in the region’s semi-franchised tier-one VALORANT circuit for three slots at the next VCT global event, Masters London in June. However, EMEA’s latest international showing didn’t inspire confidence in the region’s competitive strength. With Team Liquid not advancing past the Swiss Stage and Gentle Mates and BBL Esports suffering early Playoffs eliminations, EMEA was the second-weakest region at Masters Santiago behind VCT China. Moreover, it has been three years since VCT EMEA lifted an international trophy thanks to Fnatic’s…