Esports News Weekly Brief: April 17 – April 24, 2019

Welcome to the ESTNN Weekly Brief! Here’s your rundown of all the esports news for the past week on April 24^th, This week, we've got AI destroying Dota players, a new League of Legends event, and the return of CS_Summit! Let's jump right in.

League of Legends

Looks like we may be getting a new event in League! Riot has updated the PBE login screen to reveal, well, something! It’s a little mysterious at the moment. The screen shows a character standing before four gigantic symbols, leading some to believe this is the initial reveal for an event that was previously teased in a Riot Dev Diary.

The screen is called “Houses 2019,” and seems to indicate that players will be able to pick from four different houses (Battle, Engineer, Assassination and Sorcery) with what we assume will be different missions to match. We’ve even got a clue as to when this event might go live. The music that plays behind the login screen is the theme for this year’s Mid-Season Invitational, meaning that the even might be released to coincide with the tournament.

Speaking of MSI, Riot has released the schedule for the tournament that’s set to kick off Friday, May 10^th. You can check it out on the League of Legends website.

Dota 2

Another week, another story about poor human players being absolutely destroyed by their machine overlords. OpenAI, the Dota 2-playing version of Skynet, defeated over 99% of its human challengers last weekend. Soon, Ninja’s going to hire it to play Fortnite for him. Just watch.

Next up, we’ve got some roster changes to touch on. CompLexity Gaming has parted ways with Deth citing a mutual decision after ESL One Mumbai.

Ah, yes, ESL One Mumbai. Keen Gaming took home the trophy in India after a pretty impressive run through the Lower Bracket against Na`Vi, The Pango, and TNC Predator. They took Mineski to task and won the series 3-0.

Surprise! Someone has leaked the dates of TI 9! Vici Gaming accidentally revealed the dates for this year's International on Twitter yesterday. Looks like the Group Stage will kick off on the 16^th of August and run until the 18^th, while the main event for TI starts on the 20^th and runs to the 25^th.

Finally, it’s not a Dota 2 news roundup without talking about Auto Chess. The massively-popular mod made the jump to the Andriod mobile platform last week following over a month of rumors about its release. Unfortunately, it’s only available on Android devices at the moment. If you’d like to give it a try, check out our article that’ll walk you through the process.

Overwatch

The biggest news in Overwatch isn’t what happened over the last week (spoiler: not much), but what’s coming up this weekend. The Dallas Ultimate Weekend kicks off on Saturday and will be the first set of homestand games played in the Overwatch League. Eight teams will travel to Dallas to take each other on. Great thing is, this Ultimate Weekend is coming at just the right time. Many teams are either on the cusp of a playoff berth or just inside it, so we may get to see some playoff shakeups this weekend! Here's the player availability for the autograph sessions this weekend, as well!

We’ve already got two of our three primers out for you to read up on the teams in attendance and all the big storylines going into the weekend. You can check out Part 1 here, and Part 2 over here.

Counterstrike: Global Offensive

There’s been some weird stuff going on in Counterstrike, recently. The whole Blast Pro Series/RFRSH debacle (which is, as of now, unconfirmed) and Astralis skipping out on IEM Sydney, the scene seems to be under a little stress at the moment. Regardless, CS has been pretty quiet this week.

Unless, of course, you like CS_Summit. And who doesn’t? The relaxed atmosphere, the shoeless casters and the players eating Uncrustables in the background combine to create a truly awesome experience for anyone completely tired of watching 100 best-of-threes for ESL Pro League. Count me in.

CS_Summit will run from May 23^rd to the 26^th. Tune in to see Team Liquid, ENCE,  Vitality, Renegades, NRG, and Ghost Gaming duke it out for their share of the $150,000 USD prize pool.

Fortnite

Avengers incoming! Marvel and Fortnite developer Epic Games has partnered up again to promote the impending release of Avengers: Endgame by throwing what looks like a ton of Avengers gear into everyone’s favorite builder royale.

Whatever it takes.
4.25.19.#FortniteXAvengers pic.twitter.com/beyFW3Kkvi

— Fortnite (@FortniteGame) April 24, 2019

Fortnite’s official Twitter account posted several tweets showing Fortnite player models wearing different pieces of equipment from the Marvel Universe, including Iron Man’s famous suit and Captain America’s Shield. It’s safe to say that this event, whatever it is, will go live before the movie’s release on Friday. Keep your eyes peeled!

Apex Legends

In Apex Legends news, it looks like the newest entry in the battle royale genre has taken a punch to the gut in recent weeks. According to two reports by Seeking Alpha and StreamElements, after Apex Legends broke the Twitch record for hours watched in a week, it dropped by over 75% by a month after its release.

We still don’t have fixes for the slo-mo lobbies or hit registration issues, but hey! At least we’ve got Gibraltar buffs, right?

That’s all for the ESTNN Weekly Brief for Wednesday, April 24^th! Make sure to head on over to ESTNN.com to catch up on all of the latest news and check back here next week for another Episode of The Brief!

League Image VIA: Riot Games PBE

Dota 2 Image VIA: Medium

Overwatch Image VIA: Dallas Fuel and Blizzard Entertainment

Counterstrike: Global Offensive Image VIA: CS_Summit, Beyond the Summit

Apex Legends Image VIA: Respawn Entertainment