Preston Byers joins the show to talk Call of Duty League's Major III.

OG wins Stockholm major Cale Michael jumps on the show to discuss.

MSI 2022 is taking place in South Korea. Chinese teams such as Royal Never Give Up, or RNG, are having to play from China due to Covid restrictions. To accommodate competition, Riot has implemented a special network latency tool to keep competition fair. Ping was meant to be set at or near 35 milliseconds. But in-tournament, ping issues have cropped up and things have not gone according to plan. Dot Esports Tyler Esguerra returns to the show to break it all down.

The open beta for Overwatch 2 launched late last month with a huge flurry of interest. The game immediately broke viewership records on Twitch, with 460 thousand viewers in less than two hours and a high of 1.5 million. But the game quickly plunged, losing 99% of its audience in a week. Jessica Scharnagle returns to the show to break it all down. Read 'Overwatch 2 viewership plummets 99 percent after breaking viewership records for franchise in opening week' on Dot Esports. You can find...

The LCS Spring Finals took place in Houston last weekend. Evil Geniuses beat both Team Liquid and 100 Thieves in a 3-0 shutout. It was also the first in-person major League event since the start of the pandemic. Joining Imad this week is Evil Geniuses' General Manager Andy Barton and Riot's Head of Esports for North America and Oceania Chris Greeley.

Last week, China's League of Legends Pro League, or LPL, banned LGD's Chen "Jay" Bo for life for match-fixing, per a statement made on social media platform Weibo. Jay will also be forbidden from streaming League of Legends content on his personal stream. An investigation found text messages in which Jay allegedly communicated with an outside organization to intentionally lose matches during the 2022 LPL Spring Split. This week, Imad is joined by Dot Esports contributor Mateusz Miter to break...

As the war between Russia and Ukraine rages on, the VALORANT Champions Tour, or VCT, has Russian players facing restrictions from competing. This affects Fnatic and FunPlus Phoenix who reportedly were scrambling to find replacements for their Russian players. Because FPX was not able to find enough replacements, its roster will not be traveling to Reykjavik in Iceland, and will instead be replaced by Team Liquid. Because VCT Masters is an international event, Russian players cannot travel...

G2 Esports has filed a lawsuit against blockchain company Bondly, which was set to develop the sale of NFTs for the brand. G2 claims that Bondly misled leadership and is seeking $5.2 million dollars in damages. This week, Imad is joined by Mikhail Klimentov, who reported the story for the Washington Post, to discuss the lawsuit and esports' relationship with NFTs.

With COVID now trending downward, the fighting games scene is slowly starting to open up in-person events. Evolution (EVO) will return to Las Vegas this year and the Smash World Tour will finally come together. On this week's episode, Imad is joined by Dot Esports FGC reporter Cale Michael to talk about the FGC.

Due to the ongoing war between Ukraine and Russia, much of the esports industry, along with most nations, have showed support for Ukraine, including sending donations to humanitarian efforts and condemnations of Russia's actions. Tournament organizers have also banned some Russian teams from competing in events. Events that were to take place in the CIS region, which includes Russia, have been cancelled. This week, Imad is rejoined by Dot Esports reporter Mateusz Miter to discuss the latest...

Russia has declared war on Ukraine. The esports scene in Europe is tied greatly to Russia and its neighboring countries. Alraedy, orgs such as G2 Esports, Ninjas in Pyjamas, Astralis, and others have made statements condemning Russia's actions. Ukranian CS:GO pro Oleksandr "s1mple" Kostyliev expressed his frustrations on Twitter saying his city, Kiev, is being shelled. Kostyliev was just in Poland for IEM Katowice 2022. This week, Imad is joined by Dot Esports reporter Mateusz Miter to break...

Last month, a 14-year-old boy in Lahore, Pakistan, shot his family dead. Police claim that he was "under the influence" of PUBG Mobile. In a statement, police said, "The PUBG addict boy confessed to have killed her mother and siblings under the influence of the game. He has developed some psychological issues because of spending long hours of the day playing the online game." Police say he was quick to get agitated and that his mother scolded him earlier for playing the game too much instead...

Motif Esports, a U.K. based esports organization has completely disbanded, deleting its website and Twitter profiles in the process. Two members of its all-female VALORANT team alleged to have experienced both racism and sexual harassment when competing in VCT Game Changers. The team's former captain, Joanne Rae, shared a Twitlonger detailing a toxic work environment and alleged that founder Jack "Jaws" Willis sexually harassed her. Her teammate, Barbora "Rebecca" Řezáčová. claimed there was...

Last month, Savvy Gaming Group purchased both ESL and FACEIT Group in a massive $1.5 billion dollar deal. Savvy is fully backed by Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund and is essentially the esports and gaming arm of its larger sports acquisition and marketing efforts. The Saudi Arabian government has a poor human rights record, including a number of vast restrictions to women, and anti-LGBTQ+ laws. Over the past years, the country has been trying to change its public image around the world...

On back-to-back episodes of FTW, we're talking shooters. This week, it's the Call of Duty League's turn in the spotlight. It, as well as its sister league in the Overwatch League, will be feeling the ramifications of Microsoft agreeing to buy their parent company Activision Blizzard for a record-breaking $68.7 billion dollars. On this week's episode, Imad is joined by freelance Call of Duty League reporter Tanner Wooten to talk about what Microsoft's acquisition could mean for the future of a...

Halo esports is back, and with the launch of the newest title in the series, Halo Infinite, the scene is off to a great start. After a couple of Majors and some Pro Series tournaments, Cloud9 stand atop the scene. But what's next for the esport in a franchise that has been around for as long as Halo has? Is the scene just surviving on nostalgia, or is it sustainable? To answer these questions and get some insight into the state of the esport as it stands, we're joined by Dot Esports FPS staff...

2021 was an interesting year for esports. The first part of the year was quiet, with COVID still raging and vaccination programs getting off the ground. But as the year progressed, some players were banned, others were unbanned, and an entire company was at the forefront of an industry-wide reckoning. To break down the year in esports for 2021, Dot Esports' Investigative Lead, Jacob Wolf, joins this week's episode.

p>Last week saw the conclusion of the first ever Valorant Champions Tour. European team Acend took home the gold and a hefty $350,000 as well. They beat Gambit Esports 3-2. Teams were also paid 50% of net proceed from skin sales, with total sales coming out to $7.5 million. It marks a fantastic year for VALORANT, an esport that came into prominence during the pandemic. Viewership during VCT saw a peak of 811,000, an exponential rise from events that had taken place earlier in the year....

Last week, esports team Panda Global launched a Kickstarter for a new pro-level GameCube controller. This controller was made to address the inconsistencies that Smash players face when hunting down a weapon of choice. As of publishing, the Kickstarter has surpassed 1.2 million dollars. On this week's episode, Imad is joined by Dr. Alan Bunnay, CEO of Panda Global, and Matt Samperi, president of Panda Hardware, to talk about what they hope to change about a decades-old controller while...

On Nov. 16, Kirsten Grind, Ben Fritz and Sarah Needleman of The Wall Street Journal put out a bombshell report regarding Bobby Kotick, CEO of Activision Blizzard. Earlier this year, California's Department of Fair Housing and Employment sued Activision Blizzard over multiple allegations of employee harassment and abuse. The company has been since been combative, fighting back at the allegations and appealing to the public that it is a safe place to work that's inclusive of all types of...

Free Agency is upon us for League of Legends where teams are expected to make major bids for top players with expiring contracts. Underscoring the hundreds of thousands in salaries that are likely going to be used as bartering chips is a change in talent management. As the esports industry as grown, so has the influx of established talent agencies willing to represent esports athletes. This week, Hawken Miller, who wrote a story for Dot Esports about the changing agency landscape within...

The Activision Blizzard saga rumbles on, with the ramifications of the DFEH lawsuit of earlier this year and the other controversies surrounding the company in 2021 finally affecting the company's games themselves. Activision Blizzard announced last week that Overwatch 2 and Diablo 4 were delayed even further back than before. This week, The Washington Post's Shannon Liao, who has done extensive reporting on the entirety of the ActiBlizz going-on over the last few months, joins Imad on the...

The Counter-Strike: Global Offensive PGL Major 2021 in Stockholm, Sweden is underway. It's the first CS:GO Major since StarLadder Major in Berlin in 2019, meaning that PGL's highest-ever prize pool is at a whopping $2 million. In the world of VALORANT esports, the Last Chance Qualifiers are underway. As the name suggests, it's the last chance for teams to fight their way up to the Champions event. While the event started on Oct. 12, false-positive COVID tests pushed the event to Oct. 27. On...

Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl is the new hotness in the Smash scene. No, really. The game's technical intricacies and fast pace have impressed veterans of the scene such as Adam "Armada" Lindgren, one of the greatest Melee players of all time. He joined the show this week to chat with Imad about just what makes NASB so special from a gameplay perspective, what the game's developers have goten right, and whether it has the legs as a competitive game to stick around in a saturated platform fighter...

Russia's Team Spirit shocked the world of DotA 2 when it took home The International 10 and its hefty $18.2 million prize. The win was so big that Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin put out a statement congratulating the team. This week, Cale Michael of Dot Esports joineed the show to talk about the champions' unlikely win at TI10, what went wrong and right for North American teams like Quincy Crew and Evil Geniuses, and the implications of Team Spirit's win on the future of the esport as...