General: Overwatch Anchors Strong Q2 2016 with 15 Million Players

Overwatch is as big a success as it has seemed for the past several months since launch. During today’s Activision-Blizzard investor call, the company revealed the numbers of players along with the news that revenues are up 50% year-over-year and a quarterly record of $1.14 billion, slightly over revenue totals for the same quarter in 2015.

ESL Sponsors Qualifiers for Brooklyn Beatdown Street Fighter V Tournament

Street Fighter V players will have multiple opportunities to qualify for ESL’s Brooklyn Beatdown tournament, including an online tournament series for North America, Brazil and Europe.

Southern California’s Wednesday Night Fights will host their own series of qualifier tournaments, with the winning player earning a fully paid trip to New York City for the October event.

The top eight participants of WNF each week will each receive ranking points towards the finals event. Last night’s tournament was the first qualifier, and the series will culminate the final event deciding the winning player on September 21.

Brooklyn’s Next Level Arcade also announced that they will be giving away weekend event passes–for ESL One and Brooklyn Beatdown–to participants at their weekly Next Level Battle Circuit tournaments and weekend events. Based on tweets from the arcade, the passes wont be given exclusively to the winners.

ESL’s Brooklyn Beatdown Open Cups–their series of online qualifiers–will continue online, with the top two placers each week earning a spot in the regional finals later this month. The North American final will be held Aug. 23 and includes four qualifiers so far: Chris Tatarian, XsK Samurai (winner of Capcom Pro Tour Online Qualifer #1), MikeandIke12, and Yuudai.

The European and Brazilian regional finals will be held online August 28 and August 31, respectively. For the full schedule of Open Cups ahead of the regional finals, visit ESL’s website.

Brooklyn Beatdown will be held at the Barclays Center October 1-2, during ESL One New York. The tournament will be open entry with a player cap of 1024, and a prize pool of $75,000.

Sources: ESLNext Level (Twitter)

General: Elder Scrolls Legends Open Beta Begins

Fans of the Elder Scrolls and of TCGs will be happy to hear that the open beta for The Elder Scrolls Legends has officially kicked off. The game can be downloaded from the official site where you can also read articles about deck building, game basics and much more.

Overwatch: World Cup Teams to be Selected by the Community

The Overwatch community will soon be instrumental in the selection of national representatives to represent their nations at Blizzcon 2016 and the Overwatch World Cup. Blizzard will nominate several players who have “distinguished themselves in the community” including pro players, community personalities and local players.