The Café

Here come the new Dragons

https://twitter.com/ShanghaiDragons/sta ... 0166795265

NEW DRAGONS! vore THEM RAWWWWWWW (boy the filter kills that huh)

Lookin' like an almost fully South Korean roster now with Diya (I think?) the only remaining Chinese player.

Atlanta's team name/colours/logo leaked, so OWL got out in front and made the announcement today. No roster yet.



Red/grey, ehh. Phoenix, sure. "Reign" is also the name of a women's soccer team in Seattle if that matters to anyone.

meanwhile Paris has announced their roster but not their name or livery just yet

https://twitter.com/OverwatchParis/stat ... 3865435136

everyone's labeled like characters in an editorial cartoon, just needs Kelly in the corner. Nice of 'em to give Jeff Hardy a chance though (I kid, Paris, I kid. They got Soon as their headliner and that's a good get.)

Toronto will supposedly announce some/all of their shit tomorrow. So we might not be far off from discovering which Canadian team if any is dumb enough to give xQc a job

Toronto Defiant vs. Los Angeles Valiant, instant rivalry

...

RED SQUAD RED SQUAD RED SQUAD RED SQUAD RED SQUAD RED SQUAD RED SQUAD RED SQUAD RED SQUAD RED SQUAD RED SQUAD RED SQUAD RED SQUAD RED SQUAD RED SQUAD RED SQUAD RED SQUAD RED SQUAD

since bad management practices seems to be the theme of the year in video games,

Uprising’s First Season Marred by Hostile Team Environment, Player Apathy Due to Alleged Mismanagement

VPEsports also learned that Uprising players have been displeased with their contracts, and more specifically, with their salary figures. According to sources, most players have been earning wages that are very close to the league minimum, and Boston was allegedly one of the only teams from the first season that did not look to re-up or renegotiate salaries with its returning players this summer despite having made league playoffs.

The housing situation for the players was also described as inadequate, wherein three players were required to live in two bedroom apartments with a mere room divider placed in the living area for the additional player.

In another incident, it was alleged that Loranger failed to notify player Stanislov “Mistakes” Danilov of the organization’s decision to pass on his second-year team option. According to sources, Danilov was very much under the impression that he was going to be retained by the team and that “all signs pointed to him being resigned.” However, the player only learned of his release via the Uprising’s post on Twitter. Further, it was shared that Loranger refused to compensate Danilov for the price of his plane ticket home: an actual legal requirement for many employment-based visa classifications, and a common courtesy afforded to legal foreign workers in others. Loranger also gave Danilov two-to-three weeks to vacate his apartment and either return home or find an alternate living arrangement.

OWL and its franchises are fresh off the vine, esports in general is still fairly nascent, so therefore the state of labour issues within the space is kind of an open question, but yo this is some bush league shit over here

Oof, why do companies have to try to exploit every new career type? This isn't growing pains for a new industry, it's exploitation of non-specific or non-existant laws.

Yeah, that's a good point. I can't remember offhand who owns the Boston Uprising, either. But regardless of who's running these teams, the franchise startup fee is like $20 million USD, or at least it was for the inaugural squads, so anyone who can afford that (and recent six-digit bidding wars over new talent in the offseason) has no excuses for lowballing players and staff on salaries and living conditions, let alone skirting labour laws.

It seems to vary wildly across the league. The Philadelphia Fusion (owned by Comcast, widely hated in the US for all kinds of legit raisins) put their people in a ridiculous mansion and even hired them a chef, as did the London Spitfire, I think.

e: Google tells me the Uprising are owned by Kraft. So that's where all my macaroni 'n' cheese dollars have been going. Or not going far enough, in this case.

https://grapeyguts.tumblr.com/post/1794 ... on-for-the

if you somehow missed the source for this joke

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yBLdQ1a4-JI

Classic! How long before there's a Red Dead version I wonder.

oh jeez

https://youtu.be/KYTT4orVixE

Perfect.

It's big cowboy season.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PKYVvPNhRR0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G8LbOecWGug

Ashe looks amazing. Good speed and mobility options, an extremely cool lever-action rifle with some kinda unique looking ironsight stuff, DYNAMITE SHOT COMBOS (!) that might finally nail the old Unreal Tournament shock rifle shot combo tick I hope I still have in muscle memory after all these years.

And she tops all that off with one of the best ultimate concepts in Overwatch so far: effin' Bob, as a summon. I can't wait to see how that works, if his behaviour is procedural, always follows the same attack pattern, or is actually fully controllable like a Final Fantasy X Aeon or something and I've been barking up the wrong tree this whole paragraph.

IT'S REAL

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7sQdF2kjCTU

Overwatch is almost a playable Saturday morning cartoon so this makes sense. This will look good next to a box of New Day's Booty O's.

they made a free album for him too

https://luciomusic.com/

Canada got swept by China 3-0 in the World Cup semis, we now go live to Tilted Guy who is totally not tilted this time you guys just ask him

https://twitter.com/xQc/status/1058815152760352768

Ashe looks really good in Valiant greens.

https://twitter.com/LAValiant/status/10 ... 3356600320

Delthazar wrote: ↑

Thu Oct 25, 2018 3:22 pm

since bad management practices seems to be the theme of the year in video games

sounds like mistakes were made






but seriously who the fuck decides who gets dropped? ain't none of this makes sense

i look at ashe and i'm like "i, too, enjoyed borderlands 2" (not really a complaint)

ps del: guess who has a nexus card and bought you 3 huge fuckoff boxes of pop tarts?!

hahaha, that owns, thanks duder

https://twitter.com/OverwatchParis/stat ... 6309103617

wouldn't be a french team without garish colours, also is that a rooster? why is that a rooster. is there something about france and roosters I was unaware of

I don't know the raisin behind it, but France has used the Rooster as a national animal for sports teams for a long time.

Best colours of the new teams so far.

When was the last time you saw a panda hunt anything

like, other than a warm spot to curl up for a nap, maybe

That one kind of looks like Kung-Fu Panda, who does kick some amount of butt, I guess.

Also, have some origin of the Gallic rooster lore: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gallic_rooster

Hell yeah rooster lore

gonna pluck and vore them roosters, as we do here on the Del Estate when the rooster-to-hen ratio gets outta control

wonder if my Overwatch skills are feeling sluggish or atrophied because

1) I'm probably like 15 years older than the average for this playerbase and not gettin' any younger

2) my keyboard is junk, my mouse is falling apart, and the hardcover CD case I've been using in lieu of a proper mousepad since I moved is a bad idea all around (my desk's particular woodgrain is extremely unfriendly to mice)

3) all these Yakuza 0 battle themes I play a little too loudly during matches are gettin' me PUMPED but also killing my situational awareness

Probably all three

I feel like I've really been sucking at Overwatch lately too. In my case its because

1) I can't hit the broad side of a barn with any character, which means I've lost Reaper vs Ana duels and then have been forced to uninstall the game immediately
2) I always get way too overaggressive and get in deep before I realize the rest of my team is back being pussies somewhere else
3) My cat likes to sit on my desk and ram her face into my mouse hand which totally kills my kpd.