Stress levels faced by top-level esports players are equal to those experienced by professional athletes.

That's according to a new study from the University of Chichester, which looked at the psychological impact of major esports contests on those taking part.

The study, titled Identifying Stressors and Coping Strategies of Elite Esports Competitors, will be published in the International Journal of Gaming and Computer-Mediated Simulations.

Read more

Video games are a small window into Chinese life, but they're a window nonetheless, and video games themselves, in China, are huge. China accounts for more than half of the entire planet's PC gaming revenue. In fact, despite it being smaller than mobile gaming there, China's PC gaming market alone made over $15bn in 2018; more than half the entire amount of revenue made in the US gaming industry overall, including consoles, mobile, the lot. Going by the numbers of analyst firm Niko Partners, as of 2018 there were a total of about 630 million gamers in China - a little over 8 percent of humans on the planet.

Huge. But we know there are lots of people in China, and we know lots of them play games. What's really interesting is that these people are playing games in what is, on paper, the most aggressively censored system around. I suspect this sort of thing is why economists love visiting China, even if doing so is a risk: everything is a case study.

Games are no different. Under Chinese law, video games can't contain anything that "threatens China's national unity, sovereignty, or territorial integrity". They can't harm "the nation's reputation, security or interests". They can't promote cults, or "superstitions". They can't "incite obscenity, drug use, violence or gambling" - although loot boxes are, of course, fine (in fact Niko Partners analyst Daniel Ahmad reckons a Chinese game may have invented them as far back as 2003) - and they can't include anything that "harms public ethics" or China's "culture and traditions". They also can't include any "other content" that might violate China's constitution or law, whatever that may be, and they have to be published in China by a Chinese company.

Read more

Reigning Dota 2 champions OG have just won the ninth International (TI9), taking the trophy - sorry, Aegis of Champions - home to Europe from Shanghai, China alongside a cool 15m in prize money. They also set a new record, becoming the first team - and first individual players - to win the championship twice.

Earlier in the day, after technical issues made for a delayed start, PSG-LGD, part-owned by oil-rich football club Paris Saint-Germain, saw themselves knocked out in the semi-finals by runners up Team Liquid. Had they gone through, PSG-LGD would have faced OG in a rematch of last year's final. The Chinese team's status as the last remaining "home" side in Shanghai meant their earlier best-of-three match played out in front of a raucous, packed-out Mercedes Benz Arena, and despite their team being knocked out in the morning that atmosphere continued throughout.

Both finalists were previous winners of the tournament, guaranteeing us a record-breaking two-time winner. Team Liquid won the tournament two years ago at TI7 in 2017, earning $10.9m, while OG came out on top last year for TI8, earning $11.2m along the way - that was despite OG's status as huge outsiders, when they lost half of their team to a rival side, EG, a few weeks before the tournament. OG's two wins in a row means the players have amassed nearly $27m (approximately 22m) between them in the last 13 months.

Read more

Valve, alongside its business partner in China, Perfect World, has given us an update on the progress of Steam China today, after both companies had been silent on the topic for over a year.

Eurogamer attended the brief presentation, given by Perfect World CEO Dr. Robert H. Xiao in Shanghai, where a small number of local and international press were told the companies were "one more step closer" to launching Steam China, which will be separate from the international version of Steam. A handful of launch games were revealed, including Dota 2 and Dota Underlords. There were no actual launch dates or broader windows mentioned for Steam China itself, mind, nor a look at how that storefront may shape up or any details on its features, barring the fact it'll support VR, multiplayer games, interesting games with "innovative, creative ideas," and "single-player games with abundant storylines". As far as we could tell, none of the non-Chinese launch games had official approval just yet, either.

In Xiao's words, "the Steam China project is undergoing solidly and smoothly" - but what is it, exactly? As it stands, Steam is actually widely available for Chinese players already. As of right now we've tested and confirmed it's possible to buy, download and play games through the Steam store in China as usual, with no issues - and no need for a VPN. Community features, such as discussion forums, are unavailable, but otherwise the platform as it stands still acts as a huge loophole in the Chinese government's strict regulation of games. Where it might take many months of admin and applications for a game to get through the approval process - if it gets through at all - or many revisions to a game's content to ensure it meets the various Chinese standards, that same game can already be bought and played in China, unfiltered, unregistered and unchanged, on regular old Steam.

Read more

Artifact is a mess. 101 players are in game at the time of writing, with the 24 hour peak being only marginally better at 124. Valve hasn't said anything about the game since 29th March, when the company announced the team will "be heads-down focusing on addressing these larger issues instead of shipping updates". The most action Artifact has seen on Twitch in recent months was when people decided to stream full length movies and porn in the game's section. Artifact, at least for now, is a dead game, and arguably Valve's most spectacular failure to date.

"It was a couple of weeks before the Artifact launch, and I was like, they can't really launch it like this can they?" Sean "Swim" Huguenard tells Eurogamer.

By this point Swim had been in the Artifact closed beta for almost a year, and had submitted "several pages of pretty lengthy feedback" to the development team. He made a name for himself in the world of Gwent, having been one of the top deck creators, had consulted on other games, and planned to go into Artifact when it launched as both a content creator and pro player, aiming to make it to the $1m tournament Valve had planned for early 2019, even signing with esports organisation Evil Geniuses. So he certainly knew more than most when it came to card games. But it seemed the feedback from him, and other top card game players, was being ignored during the beta.

Read more

So, you want to get into Auto Chess games. ACs...Auto Battlers? Regardless of what you call them, these games have quickly become some of them most popular and exciting games out right now.

The genre is simple on the surface. Using money you acquire every turn, you buy units from a shared pool that smack the enemy's units until either you or your opponent wins. But the beauty's in the depth. There's plenty of variables to consider once you're deep into Auto Battlers, like items, the placement of your units, unit upgrades, character classes / factions and the bonuses they provide. Once you better understand these games they reveal themselves to be the hardcore strategy titles they truly are, demanding you play meticulously or end up beaten or worse, broke.

Dota Auto Chess, Dota Underlords, Teamfight Tactics and Auto Chess all have their distinct differences and individual perks, and everyone's bound to have a favourite. This article will introduce you to all four of the Auto Chess games and delve into what sets them apart from the others, highlighting unique features to help you figure which ones to start playing.

Read more

The auto chess wars have begun.

Sparked by the surprise success of the Dota auto chess mod, created by Chinese team Drodo Studio, a number of big-name publishers and developers have quickly turned around efforts of their own - and they're proving early doors big hits.

Auto chess games are "auto battlers", that is, they're turn-based competitive multiplayer strategy games in which you send units out onto a board divided up into squares, then the combat plays out automatically. There's more to the genre than this, of course, but that's essentially it.

Read more

Valve has released a new game - Dota Underlords.

Dota Underlords is the company's standalone take on the Auto Chess explosion - and is sparked by the hugely popular Dota Auto chess mod for Dota 2.

Like Dota Auto Chess, Dota Underlords doesn't really have anything to do with chess, except it's played out on a board. Like Dota Auto Chess, Dota Underlords pits you against seven opponents and involves building, combining and leveling up a crew of characters from the Dota universe. Round after round you buy new characters, discover powerful items, deploy them on the board and watch the combat play out automatically. It's not about twitch reflexes. Rather, this is a considered turn-based strategy game in which you can sit back and watch the action play out.

Read more

The world of pro Dota 2 is no stranger to drama and controversy. Gabe Newell once called a esports host an "ass" and fired him mid broadcast after he opened the show with jokes about Chinese porn. Players have written 7500-word blog posts about not being paid. And a tournament's Major status was revoked mere weeks before the event because players were worried about failing Filipino drug tests.

But now there is another controversy in the world of Dota involving racism, massively offensive comments, and players having to make a stand in order to get some kind of acknowledgement from Valve.

WARNING: THE FOLLOWING CONTAINS LANGUAGE SOME MAY FIND OFFENSIVE

Read more

Valve has announced it will make its own version of the immensely popular Dota Auto Chess mod.

What will become of the original mod is now unclear. Valve staff invited the mod's creators, Chinese team Drodo Studio, to meet with them in February. There were discussions about working together, a blog post from Valve states: "but we both came to the conclusion that Valve and Drodo could not work directly with each other for a variety of reasons.

"We ended up agreeing that we'll each build our own stand-alone version of the game, and support each other to the fullest."

Read more