Top Hot News: January 2018 in Review

Table of Contents

So many exciting events happen in the gaming world that sometimes it’s difficult to follow them all. We’ve chosen the most significant news of January 2018 from the worlds of CS:GO, Dota 2, and PUBG gaming. This will help you guys not to miss anything interesting.

Games updates

At first sight, it may seem like popular game titles are fully formed structures, where everything is settled and clear. That’s not totally true – such games as CS:GO and Dota 2 were released a long time ago, and without in-flight updates, they would be old and uninteresting. So, the developers regularly propose additions to their creations, keeping the gaming experience thrilling even to long time fans.

PUBG is a relativity new game, so it still has lots of fresh things being added – in fact, this shooter only got its final 1.0 PC version in December 2017, and it could be compared to a fast-growing baby.

January 2018 brought a few nice changes to all three of these games. Here they are in brief.

Desperado and Biker can be bought for Battle Points along with Wanderer and Survivor crates with 40% dropping chance for new and 10% for existing crates. The developers of PUBG have even revealed drop chances for particular items from new crates. Of course, very rare PUBG skins will get a nice price on Skins.Cash.

Updates of PUBG are directed mostly at improving game performance, fixing various bugs, and fighting against cheaters. Also, players have got more virtual objects along with additional languages for object labels (Russian, Japanese, Chinese).

The Xbox version of PUBG is still in its pre-release state, so the developers are trying hard to optimize performance, balance game mechanics, and fix bugs. Even before the full release, the shooter has become very popular on game consoles from Microsoft – after only a month of availability, it has been downloaded more than 4,000,000 times. To celebrate this success, the developers distributed 30,000 BP free to all gamers who registered their characters before 31st of January.

News on Esports tournaments

We had some super exciting Esports events in January 2018 and some interesting news from professional leagues.

In the Esports world of CS:GO:

E-Sports Entertainment Association League (ESEA) set an age restriction for young players to participate in its tournament MDL Season 27 – only those 16 years old and above will be accepted.

In 2018, video streaming of popular leagues ESL Pro League and ESL One moves from YouTube to Facebook. This decision has been made by ESL, and the organization has signed a contract with Facebook about this.

A huge Esports event happened in January – ELEAGUE Boston 2018 CS:GO Major Championship with $1,000,000 in the prize pool. The team Cloud9 was the winner!

In the Esports world of Dota 2:

Three big Dota 2 tournaments happened in January:

1. Captains Draft 4.0 – with prize pool $500,000. Team Secret won this event.
2. Galaxy Battles II: Emerging Worlds – with prize pool $500,000. The winner was VGJ.Thunder.
3. ESL One Genting 2018 – with prize pool $400,000. Newbee was the winner.

For more details about these and upcoming Esports events, visit the Tournaments section of the Skins.Cash blog.

Player transfers

Professional gaming competitions have existed for a few years already, and some powerful brands have been formed inside of this industry – both teams and players. As in classic sports, teams often invite new players, and players often look for better opportunities in other teams. The Esports industry is quite young, so changes in teams happen with lightning speed…

In January 2018, we saw some interesting migrations of players. Here is a list of the most significant transfers in top Esports teams.

CS:GO

• Team Spirit has got a new player – Viktor “somedieyoung” Orudjev joined this Russian Esports organization.
• Jonas “whimp” Svendsen finished his career as a professional player, but he stays in the industry as Director of Esports in the organization North.
• Nicolai “dev1ce” Reedtz returned to Astralis’ roster before ELEAGUE Major Boston. He missed a few events before this.
• The Team NRG has signed Ethan “nahtE” Arnold.
• Jesse “zehN” Linjala left the team Sprout.
• North has replaced its coach – Alexander “ave” Holdt instead of Casper “ruggah” Due. Daniel “mertz” Mertz from North’s academy joined the main roster, replacing René “cajunb” Borg.

Dota 2

• LGD Gaming renewed its active roster with Wang “Ame” Chunyu, who was inactive before, and with a new player Jian Wei “xNova-” Yap
• Saahil “UNiVeRsE” Arora joined Fnatic to replace Khoo “Ohaiyo” Chong Xin.
• Karl “Karl” Jayme, Jomari “Grimzx” Anis, Fernando “Nando” Mendoza, and Jayjay “yAj” Garan are four new players of the team Execration.
• The roster of The Final Tribe has been boosted by two new players: Pontus “NoX” Frost and Axel “Pablo” Källman.
• Vega Squadron has renewed its roster with _Nikita _“Palantimos” Grinkevich, Dmitry “UnderShock” Bolshakov, Džoni “Blizzy“ Ri, Bakyt “Zayac” Emilzhanov, and Semion “CemaTheSlayer” Krivulya.

PUBG

• John “Hetror” Bent joined the PBG team of OpTic Gaming.
• Ninjas in Pyjamas has got Oliver “Ollywood” Tell.
• Logan “Zanpah” Heckman is a new player of Tempo Storm.
• Team Liquid added to its PUBG crew three guys: Jim “jeemzz” Eliassen, Samu “Sambty” Kauppinen, and Jord “ibiza” van Geldere.
• Zhou “BuGuNiao” Jian-Bo has become a part of LGD Gaming.

We will continue checking the news on these popular game titles and will inform you about the most important updates, matches, and player transfers in the News section.