Players and teams are warming up to the ladder format for the Digital Games, and several previously-inactive ladders are beginning to show signs of life.

In Counter-Strike 1.6, French team ONE4ALL sports a 1-1 record and 1115 points on the European ladder, while UK’s neP hold second, and Portugal’s mK! has a handle on third.

The Call of Duty 4  South American ladder is Brazilian-dominated, and O MAR ABRIU VEI ! has tied Canibais for first place with 1200 points and a 2-0 record. This motion bumped Ready to Kill Clan down into third.

KiFireLedius, meanwhile, has taken over the Command and Conquer 3: Kane’s Wrath ladder with wins over CoDster and JuDgEpowr, but a loss to KhuFu_OwNz. Khufu is now inactive, possibly due to being demoralized after flaming GGL’s ladder system over the course of several days. The European Kane’s Wrath ladder is actually faring a little better, as flying Dutchman Technique sports a 2-1 record and 1240 points, but a 1L streak. Can knolz take advantage? We’ll find out in the coming days. Continued…



After a long wait, the game titles for GGL’s Digital Games have been announced! With the announcement comes a site relaunch and news that ladder play runs from June 11-July 27.

Without further ado, here are the titles:

Counter-Strike 1.6 5v5
Soul Calibur 4 1v1
Command & Conquer 3: Kane’s Wrath 1v1
Burnout Paradise 1v1
NBA Live 08 1v1
NHL 08 1v1
Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne 1v1
Defense of the Ancients 5v5
Trackmania Nations Forever 1v1
Call of Duty 4 5v5

Exhibition games:

FIFA 1v1
MLB 08: The Show 1v1

For more information, rules, and dates related to the competition, visit the Digital Games site. You will need to be a GGL member to participate in the tournament, so register now to get started.

Of note is the poll that ran several months ago on the GGL site; six of the top eight games from the poll have been selected for the Digital Games program (though I question the polling audience, as DoTA, an incredibly popular game, ranked very low on the poll). Here’s the poll image (follow the jump): Continued…



The gaming press from all over the world has voted for Players and Revelations of 2007 in Counter-Strike, Warcraft 3 and Quake 4. For the first time in the award’s history, two players will share an award.

The Player of the Year in Counter-Strike is Filip “NEO” Kubski from Meet Your Makers. He won two out of three of the most prestigious tournaments in 2007 with PGS Gaming and performed very well for the large part of the year. He received 37 points, 10 more than Patrick “cArn” Sattermon (27 points) and the 2006 Player of the Year Patrik “f0rest” Lindberg (17).

Mickael “mSx” Cassisi is the Revelation of 2007 in Counter-Strike. The award is traditionally given to the players that made the biggest breakthrough in one year, and mSx was the player that took emuLate to a gold medal in the World Cyber Games. The Frenchman got 29 points. Just four points behind him was mTw’s Christoffer Sunde, who was the ESWC and WCG runner up with his danish team, known in 2007 as NoA. Continued…



The Cyberathlete Professional League, grandfather of professional gaming, is allegedly closing its doors, bringing an end to an 11-year long saga. No timeline has been given, but staff layoffs have already begun according to CAL Warcraft 3 operations manager Martijn Bloemheuvel.

[Update: The post has since been removed, however, you can see a full screenshot of the post below after the jump.]

Bloemheuvel confirmed that Chris Moncivalles, longtime commissioner of the Cyberathlete Amateur League and CPL, was the first to go. He also stated that he will attempt to call into Epileptic Gaming’s Faces for Radio show at 8PM ET Tuesday, Feb. 12 to go over the situation with hosts Marcus “djWHEAT” Graham and Robert Summa.

Moncivalles and Angel Munoz, founder and president of the CPL, refused comment. However, Moncivalles no longer appears on the CPL Staff list (compare to Google’s cached version).

News of the shutdown follows a rumored buyout of the CPL by Play&Trade, which has since fallen through. As part of the deal, Angel Munoz, founder and president of the league, was to join the Play&Trade organization, but reportedly refused to move himself and his family across the country. Continued…



Every year, GGL invites several prominent e-Sports coverage sites to vote for the e-Sports Players of the Year. The categories cover three e-Sports games with long traditions and histories: Quake (in this case, Quake 4), Warcraft III and Counter-Strike 1.6.

Each voter (or site) selects three players from every category and assigns them a rank from 1-3. Rank 1 receives 5 points, Rank 2 receives 3 points, and Rank 3 receives 1 point. At the end of the voting process, the points are tallied and the winners are announced. You can see the 2006 winners at GGL.com in a legacy format.

Without further ado, let’s name the 2007 nominees: Continued…



Carlos Alberto Simões de Tomaz, judge at the Minas Gerais’ District Court in Brazil, has decreed that both Counter-Strike 1.6 and EverQuest should be removed from the country.

Procon, a federal institution (ironically) created to defend consumers rights, has already started to remove all copies of both games from every store in the state of Góias, the first one to suffer the ban. This federal entity has also started investigating internet cafés that have to eliminate these games from all their computers. If any internet cafés don’t follow the court order, they will have to pay 3000 dollars and face being closed.

As of now, EA (responsible for the distribution of both games in Brazil) stated that it hasn’t been formally notified of the court order.

The custom CS1.6 map “cs_rio,” which is allegedly used as a test simulator for terrorists, is fingered as the reason for the game’s ban. As for banning EverQuest, Brazilian authorities claim that it leads the gamers “to total disorientation and psychological conflicts,” which is probably true. You’d have to be disoriented to keep playing EverQuest.

Update: Only distribution of these titles has been banned in Brazil.

Read: HLTV.org, arenAZero (Spanish)



The E-Sports World Cup has left France.

ESWC boss Mattieu Dallon has made good on his promise to keep at least some semblance of the ESWC in its home country, however, and the organization today announced the ESWC Masters for July 4-6, 2008 in Paris Bercy.

ESWC Masters will be an invite competition for all the official ESWC disciplines, including Defense of the Ancients, Trackmania Nations, Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne, Counter-Strike 1.6 (mixed and ladies) and (hail to the king, baby!) Quake 3. The winners will all receive berths into the Grand Final.

Prizing, autoberth, and qualification details will be released at a later date.



2007 is the year when Ola “elemeNt” Moum put his mouse and headset away and moved on from professional Counter-Strike 1.6 to “real life.” elemeNt announced his retirement from Meet Your Makers and gaming in general several weeks ago.

The Norwegian player will be remembered for his dazzling spree of success between 2002 and 2004 with goL/eoL, SK Gaming and Team NoA as well as the controversies surrounding elemeNt’s transfers between teams.

And perhaps one more thing - giving good interviews. Enjoy this exclusive Christmas feature.

1028.jpg

Continued…



The story of the week in Counter-Strike 1.6 was the transfer of PGS’s team into Meet Your Makers. The switch was surrounded with a lot of controversy - the champions of WCG 2006, Extreme Masters and ESWC 2007 were said to be unhappy with the organization, and PGS was said to have wanted to sell them.

kuben.jpg

 

The truth? Find out from the interview with the team’s player, Jakub “kuben” Gurczynski. Continued…



It was announced today that Meet Your Makers is the new home for the former Counter-Strike team of PGS Gaming.

MYM let go of their Norwegian team last week to free the space for Lukasz “LUq” Wnek, Filip “NEO” Kubski, Wiktor “TaZ” Wojtas, Mariusz “Loord” Cybulski and Kuba “kuben” Gurczynski. Those players have been one of most dominant forces in modern Counter-Strike, right next to Fnatic. Continued…



Will Singleton contributed this report.

ESL’s Extreme Masters II Main Round Counter-Strike 1.6 continued today with three matches as SK Gaming took on Team Roccat, forZe fought Man1a Gaming EM, and mTw.PokerRoom met with Against All Authority.

The first round of Counter-Strike between SK Gaming and Team Roccat started out on de_nuke. SK won in dominating fashion, crushing Roccat 16-6 in the first round of play. Team Roccat needed to tie the match on de_inferno, but SK was unrelenting and took the match with a 16-10 win. Continued…



The recent announcement of the Electronic Sports World Cup re-marrying nVIDIA and moving the final to California has pleased many fans of competitive gaming all over the world. In an interview with Wire, ESWC President Matthieu Dallon talks the prizing and the games of the 2008 season and the future plans of the organization.

Continued…