Smite commentator and streamer Brandon “DM Brandon” Nance is resigning from hos position with Hi-Rez Studios. This comes after he reacted to a viewer’s donation message talking about his struggles with suicide. Since joining the studio as a tournament caster in March 2013, Nance has become well known in the Smite community. He has nearly 80,00 followers on Twitch and also co-hosted Hi-Rez’s caster search “So You Think You Can Cast” last year.

After receiving the donation, Brandon launched into a rant about suicide and depression. While he has long been known as being outspoken- even saying once “I have always been loud, abrasive, and I don’t know how to change it. I don’t know that I would.”- many felt that the rant was extremely inappropriate. While there is video of the incident, we have chosen not to include it. However, some excerpts follow.

“There are a lot of streamers out there who would appreciate that message, I’m just going to call you an asshole. It’s a selfish, stupid thing to do.  “Everyone has loved ones. Family. Parents. If you kill yourself with another person on the planet that cares about you, you’re being a selfish prick, plain and simple. If you don’t like my opinion about that you can find somewhere else to watch who’s going to tell you that killing yourself is okay. Go fuck yourself, kid.”

Nance then went on to talk about how he’s tired of “this constant, ridiculous self-pity bullshit like ‘I have depression I can’t do anything in life.’ Everyone has fucking depression and anxiousness. Everyone has a hard time fucking waking up, and still a lot of us do it without putting the burden on a lot of other people. There is therapy, there are friends and there are people to help you.”

Needless to say, this has not been received well. In a statement posted on Twitter, Nance stated that while he could deal with the hate caused by his comments, he didn’t think that Hi-Rez studios (his employer) should have to deal with it. In his resignation message, he stated that he will continue streaming and focus on his charity works. He also plans to move from Atlanta back to New Jersey.

Kotaku also reported on this story and  reached out to Hi-Rez Studios president Stew Chisam who gave them the following statement:

“At Hi-Rez, we care about our community deeply and we take topics like suicide, depression and mental illness not lightly. All our employees are free in their opinions, but when people don’t respect the values we stand for as a company, we treat it seriously.

“If any good comes from this episode, we hope it shines a light on mental illness issues, and the need for broader education, support and open conversation about how these devastating illnesses are perceived and discussed in our society. All of us have important people in our lives that have been touched by mental illness. How we talk about these diseases is important.”

After last year’s fiasco over the Skyrim Paid Mods idea, Valve decided that the time would be ripe to give the idea another go. However, this time they chose to do it through Dota 2 – one of their own properties and only through custom game modes which meant that an awful lot of the worries expressed last time would no longer be such a problem. However, it seems that one of the big issues last time  – mod makers ‘borrowing’ content off other makers – can still rear its ugly head.

The system was launched last week and within 48 hours it was discovered that one of the most popular modes added, Roshpit Champions, was using assets from other users and even Blizzard without permission. Itme models and icons have been traced back as matches to potential in-game cosmetics submitted by other members of the community for Valve’s approval, and the icon for crusader_boots is taken from a screencap of Darion and Alexandros Morgaine’s boots, characters in World of Warcraft.

The Reddit thread pointing this out has the mode’s maker, Ryan ‘ChalkyBrush’ Racioppo, attempted to defend his use of the other Workshop users’ content by saying that he had taken from the yet-to-be-approved voting queue: “Anything submitted to the workshop is Valve’s property and can therefore be used in Valve’s game. Roshpit Champions is subject to the same rules, making the game also a property of Valve’s.” He also defended the use of crusader_boots icon by saying “I didn’t think a low-res screencap of a screencap would be an issue. The picture is awful anyway and probably needs a replacement. Does blizzard [sic] care though? In the end, Blizzard is the only one with the right to complain about this low quality image existing in this little sub-realm of Dota 2.”

Luckily for Valve, Racioppo has since changed his stance, removing all the problematic assets from his mode in an update and apologising: “I want to apologize to all the artists who I did not consult in using their amazing works. They spend hours pouring their hearts into this creative content and it is unfair to showcase them within Roshpit Champions with no credit to them.”

Of course, the rules governing such things are clearly stated in the agreement made for those creating Workshop content: “With respect to Workshop Contributions, you represent and warrant that the Workshop Contribution was originally created by you (or, with respect to a Workshop Contribution to which others contributed besides you, by you and the other contributors, and in such case that you have the right to submit such Workshop Contribution on behalf of those other contributors).”

Of course, it’s possible that Valve has intervened behind the scenes to make this happen as otherwise the Dota 2 paid mods thing seems to be going much smoother than their last attempt. We’ll probably never know though.

SMITE has released it’s first god in the Japanese Pantheon, Amaterasu the Shining Light. As always, its time to jump into an Arena match and test out the new god’s abilities!

Its a new year, and that can mean only one thing if you are a fan of HiRez Studio’s third person action MOBA SMITE: The Smite World Championships start today. In fact, through the magic of the internet this post should be going live just about the time the opening ceremonies start. Teams from all around the world have fought through their own regional seasons and HiRez has brought the winners of each league to Atlanta, GA to fight for the title of World Champion.

The first day of competition will be the placing round. Only two teams have earned a bye on this round, Cloud9 G2A and Paradigm. The rest of the competitors will have to fight their way into the Quarterfinals via a Best of 1 format. Once the contenders for the Quarterfinals have been decided, the tournament will switch to a Best of 3 format, with the grand finals being a Best of 5.

You can expect some very tense matches over the first day of competition leading into the quarterfinals. The Australian, Chinese and Latin American teams have a lot to prove as they step onto the world stage, most of them for the first time. North America and Europe will look to defend their dominance in the Smite competitive scene. Cloud9 G2A in particular looks to repeat as world champions.

Also on display will be Xbox One Smite, with four invitational leagues. It promises to be a great weekend for you if you love SMITE. And if you are there, send us some tweets from the show floor!

After a grueling season of play, the best of the best from both North America and Europe have converged in Atlanta for the Smite Super Regionals. The teams will be competing for their chance to go to the Smite World Championship in January.

Day 1, Tuesday kicked off with matches between the top NA teams with Enemy facing Team Solomid and Cloud9 going up against Cognitive Gaming.

Enemy and TSM were a fairly even match on paper, however Enemy took the series 3-1. At one point, their close teamwork even prompted the announcers to comment that they looked like “the old Team Solomid”. Harsh. With some solid engagements on gold fury and excellent objective secure, Enemy easily moves on to the next round, despite TSM clawing away one win.

Things looked a bit different on the Cloud9/Cognitive side with Cloud9 (the defending world champions) putting their opponents to bed quickly, despite a good back and forth in game 2. Despite their attempt to bring it back, Cognitive still fell with Cloud9 having a massive 40 kills while Cognitive still hovered in the sub-20 range.

That wrapped day 1 of the Super Regionals, with Enemy moving on to face the top seeded EnvyUs and Cloud 9 going on to battle against  number 2 ranked Team Eager. TSM will face Cognitive to determining the winner of the 5th place spot.

Wednesday starts the EU brackets, and it looks to be an interesting set of matches with London Conspiract coming in as the underdogs against Titan, and Paradigm and Dignitas battling it out on the other side.

The Smite Super Regionals will be continuing all week, so if you want to know when and where to catch all the action, check out the full schedule below!