Dota 2’s International is an annual championship series for professional MOBA players.
the international
Path of Exile Harvest almosts tops concurrency record with 231K simultaneous players
It doesn't seem as if Path of Exile is slowing down any time soon: Thanks to the launch of the Harvest league last week,...
GDC Summer, Dota 2’s The International, and Fortnite’s World Cup suffer fresh setbacks thanks to the pandemic
More bad news for gaming convention-goers and esports fans: Everything is canceled. OK, not everything, but a lot. And not canceled, but postponed or...
The Game Archaeologist: Tabula Rasa
The story of Tabula Rasa begins, as so many others do, with 1997's Ultima Online. Raph Koster and Richard Garriott's online fantasy sandbox proved...
MMO Business Roundup: Valve is shopping around Dota 2’s top tourney
Time for another quick roundup of a bunch of MMO-adjacent businessy stories that were drowning in our busy Thursday newsroom!
The International: Valve is raising...
Lawful Neutral: Examining DDoS attacks and their impact on MMOs
When I was younger, used to play with LEGOs with my cousins all the time. We'd spend time creating huge houses and vehicles that...
J. Allen Brack says the Blitzchung incident ‘exposed some immaturity’ in Blizzard
It's a bit long in the tooth now with BlizzCon well behind us, but the Esports Observer published an interview with Blizzard's J. Allen...
Ragnarok Online’s international servers are going dark for two months to receive a mass of updates
When you update your MMO, you have one of two methods: the drip-feed, which sees you slowly release smaller updates, or the force-feed, which...
Blizzard bans Hearthstone esports player and fires casters over pro-Hong Kong protest
I suppose it was just a matter of time before the current Chinese political mess spilled over into gaming, but it's done so now:...
Pirate holidays make landfall in LOTRO and World of Warcraft this week
Disclaimer: This author's family threw him a pirate-themed 30th birthday party and he walked the plank and it was definitely an amazing experience. Double...
US Senator Bernie Sanders publicly offers support for game worker unionization
That dull, wooden hammering you hear in the background is the attachment of planks to platforms. With the US 2020 presidential campaign season drawing...
World of Warcraft releases details for its upcoming Arena World Championship esports season
For those of us who dare enjoy esports events, the summer has a lot to look forward to, what with The International, DreamHack, the...
Dota 2 paywalls its Avoid Player feature by including it with its Battle Pass
The nature of the beast in team-based competitive games is this awful notion that frustration with how a match plays out gives one carte...
EVE Online begins CSM14 election season as Chinese corp plots takeover of Tranquility
Following the drama surrounding the EVE Online's Council of Stellar Management during its 13th season - which was capped off with the very public...
Hyperspace Beacon: I wasn’t going to talk about Anthem, but I think I should
Like everyone else working in or around the gaming industry, I read Kotaku's Jason Schreier's exposé on BioWare's development of Anthem. And like many...
MMOs you’ve never heard of: Swordsman X, Grounds of Glory, Dekaron, KAL Online, and Apsis Online
Howsabout another fun roundup of MMOs and other online games you've never heard of - or have totally forgotten about? Let's do it.
Were you...
The International Olympic Committee casts doubt on the inclusion of esports at the Olympics
The tug-of-war over whether esports should be included at the Olympic Games is becoming its own sport. In 2017, statements from the Paris Olympic...
International regulators co-sign declaration to investigate lockboxes and skin gambling
If you thought Belgium and The Netherlands were going to keep on standing alone in the fight against lootboxes, you were very much mistaken,...
Blizzard and Riot attended the International Olympic Committee’s e-sports summit this past weekend
Over the last year, we've seen a ramp-up of high-level chatter about bringing e-sports to the Olympics. Last summer the co-president of the Paris Olympic...
IGDA calls for transparent guidelines on game studio social media and harassment following Guild Wars 2 dust-up
Regardless of who you believe had the right and wrong of the ArenaNet Twitter fiasco last week, game developers have expressed concern over the...
France’s gambling authority condemns but does not ban lockboxes
The international community is becoming aware of the problems of lootboxes, and that means that laws are being formed in response to the business...
