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

Earlier this year, the first major investigation into corruption in Australian esports revealed allegations of professional Counter-Strike: Global Offensive players rigging matches.

Last month, Kotaku Australia reported six Australians had been arrested in connection with the investigation, but were later released "pending further inquiries".

Now, an ABC News report has revealed an Australian Overwatch Contenders team has found itself under fire also.

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

It's another day of innovation in the games industry, as the latest CS:GO update introduces respawns and a ping system to the game's battle royale mode.

Update Sirocco brings some major changes to servers, and along with introducing a new desert-themed map (of the same name) it's adding a few mechanics which are becoming rather common in the battle royale genre. The new respawn system will allow players to resurrect "anywhere in the map" providing their squad survives. Players will have the option to either resurrect where they died or pick a new starting spot.

To be fair to CS:GO, this respawn system seems a little different to the one used by Apex Legends - and then Fortnite - which requires squadmates to pick up their teammates' banner and carry it to a respawn beacon. If anything this sounds more like Call of Duty's Down But Not Out mode for Blackout, which similarly just requires squadmates to remain alive before allowing respawns (albeit with each new circle).

Read more

In my younger and more vulnerable years, I spent a lot of time getting shot in the head in Counter-Strike: Source. While there were many factors working against me - my age, my characteristic lack of dexterity, my (for the time) toaster-level PC, and my bargain-bin 200 DPI Dell laser mouse - I never let these disadvantages stop me from padding some lucky player's K/D ratio with my ill-fated MAC-10 rushes. When I would search through the list of servers for players of a similar skill level, I would come across a panoply of fan-made mods and maps intended to offer a respite from the endless dual grind of de_dust and cs_office, and I would occasionally take the plunge and sully my dad's hard-drive with these bizarre creations.

Of these offerings, the most consistently-populated servers were always devoted to the act of "surfing," a fact that boggled my pre-teen mind. When I would connect, I would see long, sloped ramps to nowhere, curling and twisting through empty space towards an unknown destination. While my opponents seemed to slide across the slope with ease, I would hurtle into the abyss every single time. No matter how loudly I pleaded with my fellow surfers to explain the trick, they would hurl obscenities at me and tell me to use F10 to deploy parachute - a button which would, in fact, abort the game. (To be fair, it was pretty funny the first time.) Later in life, I eventually figured out that holding a movement key against the slope allowed you to stick to the path, and I embraced surfing and other such "trickjumping" as a fun palate-cleanser at the end of a long night of gaming.

Charlie "Mariowned" Joyce is the apparent inventor of the first surf map for Counter-Strike 1.6. Joyce confided this in AskReddit thread where people revealed their "greatest accomplishment" that they can't bring up in normal conversation, and he was immediately mobbed by fans of his work, and surfing in general. "It was pretty overwhelming," he tells me. "I thought I'd just get a couple of people saying, 'hey, I remember surfing, that's cool.' Or maybe, best-case scenario, reconnecting with an old buddy. But it was way, way more than that."

Read more

We have an odd relationship with gambling in the UK. You'd be hard-pressed to find a high street or city centre that doesn't have at least a couple of bookmakers' shops mixed into it, offering bets on everything from horse racing and football to whether or not Kate Winslet will cry if she wins an Oscar (yes that was a real thing). But how does esports fit in?

According to a recent study by the UK's Gambling Commission, the percentage of British adults who have at some point in their lives placed a bet on esports is 8.5 per cent, with three per cent having placed those bets in the month the study was conducted. That's a surprising statistic for a sport many consider to be still quite niche. And it makes sense most of those bets will be online, given the nature of esports and the audience for it. But it also got me wondering: just how easy it is to walk into a betting shop and wager some cash on an esports event?

To find out, I picked three (at the time of betting) upcoming and current events to bet on, with the intention of gambling on three specific teams to win either the tournament or a particular match. These were Team Liquid to win the ESL One Dota 2 tournament, Ninjas in Pyjamas to win that day's ECS CS:GO season six game, and for the Overwatch World Cup, I had to back the home nation and bet on the UK. Secondly, I decided I had to be able to place the bet in store. We all know you can bet on esports online, so that didn't count.

Read more…

CS:GO went three to play and got a battle royale mode last week - but the surprises didn't end there, as players discovered a cryptic message which some speculated was an ARG to tease Portal 3. Despite the best efforts of CS:GO sleuths, however, Valve has since confirmed this is actually just an Easter egg - although it's still a pretty neat discovery.

The fun and games began when YouTube user snaileny posted a video of a "strange broadcast" they'd found on the new battle royale map dz_blacksite. According to snaileny, to hear this you have to stand in Room 3 for over two minutes before the (slightly creepy) message begins to play.

Players figured out the beginning of the list is in the NATO phonetic alphabet, and translates to PGPW50 SMS757 - the first half of which refers to the PGP word list (an extended biometric word list designed to prevent wiretapping). The transmission, when converted into the PGP word list, gives you 50 pairs of numbers and letters. Reddit user GetSomeGyros then figured out that the "SMS7" part of the message, meanwhile, refers to GSM 7-bit encoding: and when you put PGP pairings into this, you get the following message:

Read more…

Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, Valve's ageing but unceasingly popular online first-person shooter, is now free-to-play. But not only that! It's also just introduced a new Battle Royale mode called Danger Zone.

This isn't Counter-Strike's first dalliance with free-to-play, of course; Valve launched of free edition of the game back in September, although that version only permitted players to go up against bots - the whole enterprise being intended as a means for newcomers to familiarise themselves with Counter-Strike's weapons and maps.

Valve's new free-to-play release, however, is the real deal, and provides free access to the entire Counter-Strike: Global Offensive experience, multiplayer and all.

Read more…

The Counter-Strike pro who was caught cheating during a tournament has been banned from all esports for five years.

Nikhil "Forsaken" Kumawat was given the lengthy ban by the Esports Integrity Coalition (ESIC) after he was found using cheats during the recent Zowie eXtemesland tournament LAN finals in Shanghai.

In a video that went viral last week, Kumawat was seen trying to close the window in which the cheat file was housed as a tournament organiser checked his PC.

Read more…

A Counter-Strike pro was caught cheating mid-tournament - and he tried to delete his hack while an official checked his PC.

OpTic India player Nikhil "Forsaken" Kumawat was collared for using a cheat hack during a match against Vietnamese team Revolution at the Extremeland Zowie Asia tournament in Shanghai.

Following suspicious play, an official accessed his computer before physically preventing Forsaken from tampering with the program right in front of him.

Read more…