Sept 13: This Week in Esports
Week: Sept 7–13th
Overwatch League reveals 6 new franchises
Beginning in 2019, the Overwatch League will have 6 new teams bringing the total to 20 franchise spots globally for the OWL. The new franchises will be Toronto, Vancouver, Hangzhou, Chengdu, Paris, and Washington D.C. The franchise spots are spread across Canada (2), China (2), Europe (1), and the U.S. (1). A notable aspect to this is that the former Canadian Olympic Committee CEO, Chris Overholt will be the president of the Toronto franchise.
Team Liquid wins 2nd straight NA LCS Title
Team Liquid has been dominating the North American LoL Championship Series for most of 2018, and nothing changed this time around. In the Quarter-final, TSM came out on top against Echo Fox 3–2, and 100 Thieves swept FlyQuest 3–0. In the Semi’s, Team Liquid won 3–1 against 100 Thieves with Cloud9 beating TSM 3–2. That left the 2018 Summer Split regular season #1 ranked Team Liquid(12–6) and the #2 ranked Cloud9(11–7) to duke it out in the finals. In the end, Team Liquid took home their second straight NA LCS title 3–0. After losing in the Quarter finals in the 2018 Spring Split, TSM won the third place match against 100 Thieves 3–2. Over in Europe, Fnatic also won their second title of 2018 in the EU LCS against Schalke 04. The series went 3–1.
Fornite’s Fall Skirmish will award $10 million
Epic has decided to bump up the rewards from their $8 million Summer Skirmish to $10 million for the Fall Skirmish which will be played across 6 weeks. This is a continuation of the $100 million worth of rewards that Epic promised for the first year of Fortnite esports. Details of the event haven’t been released yet but with the Summer Skirmish grand prize being $225k, be ready for another competitive event.
Collegiate Esports: more varsity programs
According to the MetroNews, West Virginia Wesleyan will be joining almost 70 other collegiate esports organizations as the first varsity program in the state. They will now be able to compete online with other varsity organizations. Similar to your traditional collegiate sports, Esports coach Kevin Wu will even evaluate candidates for the program digitally, and recruit them to West Virginia Wesleyan to play for their varsity team. At Ole Miss, their Esports club will begin competing this semester and according to The Daily Mississippian, the club was only founded in January 2017 and already has 200-members across 10 teams.
Xbox Game Pass: September Additions
Xbox released 10 new games to their Game Pass subscribers. This list includes Halo: The Master Chief Collection, Quantum Break, Onrush, Aven Colony, Shadow Warrior 1, Sky-Force Reloaded, Snake Pass, Manual Samuel, Giana Sisters: Twisted Dreams, and Innerspace. This is on top of the over 100 titles already available through Game Pass and the Microsoft First Party games like Forza Horizon 4 and Gears 5.
INDIE | Sega’s Yakuza Studio announces new project
It was announced at Sony’s pre-Tokyo Game Show event on September 10th the Sega’s Yakuza studio would be releasing Project Judge and, according to The Verge, will have a full release on December 13th in Japan and other Asian markets and won’t be released until next year in Western markets. Project Judge will star Takuya Kimura, who is one of the most famous entertainers in Japan. The PS4 exclusive is currently available to play as a demo. Check out the trailer here.
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