In recent years, one of the larger ongoing issues on Youtube has been the disclosure of when a Youtuber is being paid to promote a product. Originally it was hard to determine whether a video was a ‘paid for’ one, purely because no laws existed to set out proper process – and some took advantage of this to not disclose videos they had been paid for. Fortunately new laws come into play a while back that made it much easier to define exactly what should be done. After all, for a Youtuber who’s next meal depends on their video output paid-for content is a good thing and as long as the viewers are aware of its nature then all is above board and no one is misled.

However, that’s not to say all the problems are gone for good and recent events couldn’t have shown that more clearly. a recent video from H3H3 Productions has shown that two prominent Youtubers – ProSyndicate and TmarTn – have been making videos to promote CSGO gambling through a website called CSGOLotto. A website that they both own. Needless to say once the word got out, the Internet was in uproar.

ProSyndicate has been tweeting out that he apologises if people felt misled by this, while TmarTn at first followed the same line but then took to deleting said tweets and privatising videos about CSGOLotto despite having previously protested innocence in this matter. His original Twitlonger response on the matter can still be seen here though thanks to webcache. TeamEnVyUs, who have a minority stakholder in TmarTn, have come out with a statement to make clear that they were not involved with the situation and nor were any of its players.

Earlier Valve seemed to be taking a stand against CSGOLotto by blocking access to it through their Steam client with a warning that the site was malicious, having been flagged under “phishing, scamming, spamming, or delivering malware.” This block was later reversed when it turned out that the flag was a mistake by a volunteer moderator after a number of people took to flagging the URL as such.

At the moment it remains to be seen what action, if any, will be taken against ProSyndicate and/or TmarTn. The situation is still ongoing as of time of writing, and we will of course update you if there are further developments. It’s just a sad reminder that the times of the grey area of disclosure really aren’t so far behind us yet.

Every year Summer Games Done Quick broadcasts speedruns of video games, all in the name of fundraising for charity – and with many different channels for different languages to boot.

Speedrun is the art of finishing a game as quickly as possible, and often makes use of glitches and bugs within a game to skip chunks of game which is why older games are commonly seen on speedrunning channels. For those games that aren’t exploitable like this, speedrunning is instead a challenge of perfect timing of a chain of actions with one miss resulting in a longer time taken.

This time the charity in question that they’re raising money for is Doctors Without Borders, something that we can agree is a worthy cause.

If you’re interested to see what’s on the menu this time, the schedule can be found here. If you’re interested go and watch people destroy games (although not literally) and donate for a good cause. And if you’re not? Why not donate anyway? It’s still a good cause. 😀

Competitive mode finally arrived for Overwatch last week, much to the joy of players everywhere. However, in some that joy quickly turned to irritation when issues that hadn’t been prevalent within the PTR build began to have a knock-on effect on their enjoyment.

The first was that MMR points weren’t being awarded equally for Control maps, as they had been for Assault, Escort or Hybrid. Blizzard already issued a fix on Thursday for that one having quickly tracked down the issue behind it, but now more have begun to surface.

Another fairly large one concerns players who might have issues with their network connections during competitive play still receiving the Loss punishment, even if they managed to return to the match within the one-minute timeout window allocated for players with such problems. Obviously, this has not gone down well.

Responding to fans who were asking whether they could expect a fix soon, Game Director Jeff Kaplan said that they were working on it and that they should “have some fixes coming (hopefully) next week.”

Also on the cards is a new and fairer way to settle draws, as opposed to the current “Coin Flip” Sudden Death decision-maker which is considered contentious right now by the playerbase.

It has now been confirmed that ESPN is planning to broadcast the final top 8 bracket of this month’s Street Fighter V tournament at the Evo Championship Series in Las Vegas, live on ESPN2.

With over 5,000 entrants registered for the SFV tournament this year, and the final eight players will be competing for the first place prize on live television – a major step up from years past when eSports was still seen as something the ‘general public’ would never want to view. Coverage will begin on ESPN2 from 7PM PDT (10PM EDT / 3AM BST) on July 17 (18 BST) and will also be available online at WatchESPN or Twitch’s CapcomFighters channel, as usual.

“The Street Fighter V World Championship will be one of the must-see competitions from the Evo finals,” said John Lasker, VP of programming and acquisitions at ESPN. “We are always exploring ways to serve the growing and passionate audience of competitive gaming, and we look forward to delivering this event to fans.”

ESPN’s had a growing interest in the broadcast of eSports since last year, when they broadcast the Heroes of the Dorm tournament. At the time former TV and radio anchor Colin Cowherd was not a fan of this, famously saying that he would quit if he was ever ‘forced’ to talk about ‘kids playing games’. He was suspended from ESPN in July of last year and ESPN has since opened an eSports department of the news site; having already aired several eSports tournaments.

Diablo fans were disappointed when the rumours of an expansion to their favourite game didn’t turn out to be true for Blizzcon 2015 (in fact I remember seeing disappointed Tweets across my dashboard about that time). Now however there’s some evidence that a whole new game might be on the books, at least if we’re guessing right by the job listings recently listed by Blizzard.

The main one that has caught attention is that of one looking for a Game Director for an as-of-yet unannounced Diablo Project. This suggests that the current Diablo III Game Director Josh Mosqueira has either moved on or is spearheading something else in the company that leaves him unable to work on this new project. Of course, the listing could just be for ethical, legal or business reasons and Mosqueira could be in the running still or could still be planned to get the role. It’s all speculation right now though.

Until something more concrete is revealed, that’s about all we can do.