White House Petition to #FreeLeffen Surpasses 100,000 Signature Goal

It’s doubtful that you haven’t heard about William “TSM|Leffen” Hjelte’s P-1 Visa issues by now. I’m not going to be going over the nitty gritty here; that was already done at length earlier this month here on SRK. The important footnote is that the response to Leffen being denied a Visa was huge. In response to this perceived injustice, a petition was started on the official White House site. The petition requests that all eSports players should be allowed Athlete Visas. Competitors in League of Legends are considered athletes by the government and have been given Visas, so the case for eSports competitors getting Visas has already been made, and won, in some ways.

How the petition site works is that if you get 100,000 signatures within 30 days, you’ll get an official response from the White House on the matter within 60 days of the petition’s closure. While a “yes” isn’t guaranteed–and no one should get their hopes too high–getting this petition to the goal number is definitely a step in the right direction. If the White House moves in our favor, it could mean that many other international eSports players could have their lives made easier moving forward.

Once more, It’s important to stress that reaching this goal doesn’t guarantee anything, so please keep expectations reasonable.

Source: The White House

General: Overwatch & Battleborn – WoW and EQ2 Redux

Now that they’re both in the wild, the war rages on between fans of Battleborn and Overwatch – two similar (at first glance) games competing for gamers’ attention this summer. While there’s little doubt that Blizzard’s shooter is dominating the marketing airwaves, our own Suzie Ford recently penned a column on why you can love and play both. But for Bill Murphy, there are some obvious parallels to two rival MMOs from 2004…

ZeRo Describes His Top 5 Favorite Super Smash Bros. for Wii U Moments

TSM|Gonzalo “ZeRo” Barrios has recently returned to Super Smash Bros. for Wii U competition at Toronto’s Get On My Level 2016, after a finger injury that kept him from playing his favorite game for two months.

Now that he’s back in the Smash action, he takes some time in his latest video to describe his top five favorite moments–as in “epic,” “unique,” or “amazing,” in his words–from Smash 4 tournament history. Such moments include the SoCal vs. Tristate Crew Battle from earlier this year, and Smash 4’s first appearance at Evo.

ZeRo also recently spoke about how he thinks Ryu could be Smash 4’s best fighter.

Source: ZeRo

Check Out Even More King of Fighters XIV Play from Stunfest

The King of Fighters XIV saw a lot of traffic at Stunfest thanks to eager folks wanting to get their hands on the game early. This also meant those not able to attend the event got a chance to experience the game vicariously through streamed footage.

For those who didn’t catch it live, there was plenty of impressive play from players like Frionel, Piccolo San, and Qanba|Xiaohai. You can see some of those replays below.

Despite the fact that the game isn’t out yet, Grave Lee was able to put together a quick combo video highlighting it. Granted, this combo video is simply comprised of cool combos from the play at Stunfest, but it’s still worth checking out. Roughly half of the characters available in the Stunfest demo are shown off here, so it’s a pretty good chance to take a peak at what characters are capable of in the upcoming title.

If you’d like to give the game a go before it releases, or if you just want to catch more early footage, be sure to keep your eyes on events like Combo Breaker and CEO.

Source: KOF Online, Felipe Moro, Grave Lee