Newsflash: MAD win LEC, Fnatic Valorant team changes, NFTs in esports, Endpoint academy roster, Uni of Birmingham PVP game wins dev challenge, UK Twitch streamer unbanned 2 years after false ban

Here’s our latest weekly Newsflash roundup, where we cover a host of esports and gaming news in an informal, bitesize nature for you to digest.

MAD Lions win LEC Spring 2021 final in thrilling best-of-five

MAD Lions defeated Rogue 3-2 in a crazy best-of-five series in the LEC Spring 2021 playoffs final this evening.

Rogue were 2-0 up but MAD reverse swept them to become European League of Legends champions for the first time in their history.

MAD have some UK talent in head coach James ‘Mac’ MacCormack, while Danish assistant coach Patrick ‘Pad’ Suckow-Breum has previously worked with MNM Gaming in the UK League of Legends scene.

Fnatic make Valorant team changes

Fnatic have made changes to their Valorant team which they signed back in February.

Fnatic announced in a post on their website that Greek player Kostas ‘tsack’ Theodoropoulos and UK player Muhammad ‘Moe40’ Hariff have been dropped and are now able to explore other opportunities within Valorant.

Finnish player Nikita ‘Derke’ Sirmitev and Czech player Martin ‘Magnum# Penkov have been announced as the new recruits stepping in.

Endpoint CSGO academy roster announced as flameZ departs first team

UK esports org have announced their CSGO academy roster, a few months after revealing their Endpoint ROG Academy initiative to help young UK CSGO players go pro.

The news comes after flameZ departed their first team to join OG.

University of Birmingham win NSE student Games Innovation Challenge with PVP battle arena game Blade

University students from across the country have been competing to be crowned the country’s finest student game designer. The Games Innovation Challenge was delivered by UK university esports body NSE (National Student Esports) presented by Barclays.

Students were given nine weeks to create the most innovative game, structured around the theme of competition, with the submitted entries being judged against technical quality, look and feel, entertainment, innovation and a competition plan.

More than 20 games were submitted for the final assessment, with the University of Birmingham entry ‘Blade’ taking the top spot. Blade is a 2D fast-paced 1v1 PvP Battle Arena game and the judges highlighted it’s easy to grasp yet hard to master gameplay paired with high entertainment value.

Second went to the University of York entry ‘Zen Tower’, a multiplayer physics-based free-for-all competitive brawler, while third place went to University of Arts London entry ‘Found Guys VS’, a multiplayer game inspired by the old TV game show called Finders Keepers.

NFTs in esports: Veloce, 100 Thieves and Tfue get involved

Non-fungible tokens (NFTs), data bought using cryptocurrency (usually on the Ethereum blockhain) that allows people to certify the ownership of a digital asset – usually digital art – have started breaking into esports.

Org 100 Thieves, streamer Tfue and UK racing org Veloce are among those experimenting with NFTs.

Tfue announced the NFTfue King of Gaming Collection celebrating his time in Fortnite, CoD and Minecraft.

And Veloce is teaming up with Animoca Brands, which has invested in REVV, a motorsports utility token into Veloce’s recently announced pre-IPO funding round. The partnership also covers sister company Veloce Racing — competing in the innovative electric racing Extreme E series — and in doing so, represents the first real-world global motorsport outfit to be partly funded by REVV tokens.

There’s more on 100 Thieves’ announcement in the following tweet:

UK Twitch streamer unbanned almost 2 years after false ban

UK Pokémon streamer RyanWasTaken has been unbanned by Twitch some two years after being falsely taken off the platform.

Ryan had spent a long time trying to talk to Twitch privately, but this month decided to go public. And the ban was quickly reverted.

Change for Dota 2 UK talent Teaguvnor

Dota 2 UK caster and coach TeaGuvnor has stepped away from his role as coach with Hellbear Smashers to focus on his casting with ESL One and Dreamleague.

LDN UTD announces initiative combining esports with traditional sports

UK org LDN UTD have teamed up with Matchroom to merge the world of esports with competitive sport.

Entertainment content appearing on Matchroom and LDN UTD social channels will feature athletes from the Professional Darts Corporation alongside players from LDN UTD’s rosters of FIFA, League of Legends, Valorant and Fortnite. In addition, Matchroom’s athletes will appear in LDN UTD campaigns addressing inclusion, diversity and wellness.

There’s more info on the LDN UTD website.

Flashpoint Season 3 announced

Flashpoint, the global CSGO tournament series from B Site, Inc., will return with its third iteration as an official Regional Major Ranking (RMR) event for the European region. The Flashpoint 3 main event will begin on May 10th 2021 and will feature a 16 team double-elimination bracket played out over 3 weeks of competition. 

There’s more info in this Flashpoint Season 3 press release.

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Dom Sacco

Dom is an award-winning writer and finalist of the Esports Journalist of the Year 2023 award. He graduated from Bournemouth University with a 2:1 degree in Multi-Media Journalism in 2007.

As a long-time gamer having first picked up the NES controller in the late ’80s, he has written for a range of publications including GamesTM, Nintendo Official Magazine, industry publication MCV and others. He worked as head of content for the British Esports Federation up until February 2021, when he stepped back to work full-time on Esports News UK and offer esports consultancy and freelance services. Note: Dom still produces the British Esports newsletter on a freelance basis, so our coverage of British Esports is always kept simple – usually just covering the occasional press release – because of this conflict of interest.