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Over the last few weeks, the Professional eSports Association has been seeking to set on their own CS:GO league, in which a number of teams would be invited to compete for a prize pot of a million dollars in the first year. However, when put to a vote it seemed that the teams were not interested due to concerns over long-term financial growth – which has now led to the PEA announcing that the league will now no longer go ahead.
The problem came down to competition with the ESL Pro League, which offered both profit and revenue sharing with the teams involved, as opposed to the PEA’s offer of sharing just the profit. Therefore more players voted to compete in the EPL’s league, seeing the gains they could make as much more long-term as opposed to only short-term gain from the proposed new PEA league. Another factor that had an effect on votes was that teams preferred the EPL’s current more open structure and treating eSports as its own entity, as opposed to the PEA’s idea of trying to fit old style sports franchising models onto eSports teams. In the end, the vote saw five of the six teams voting to stay with the EPL.
In a statement a spokesperson for PEA commented that “since the time of the original announcement of the PEA CS:GO league, it has become clear to the PEA organizations that there isn’t sufficient financial support in the ecosystem…to profitably operate a third prominent online league, due to the oversaturation of the marketplace and the recent upward spiral in operating costs.”
At the moment Bioware are slowly drip feeding the Internet information about the upcoming Mass Effect game, Mass Effect: Andromeda. We recently had a trailer come out, and that was huge. Now something’s been revealed which isn’t quite as huge, but welcome none the less – Andromeda will have native controller support for its PC version.
The news was revealed via a tweet sent out by Andromeda’s lead designer, Ian S. Frazier yesterday:
In case it wasn’t clear: yes, we now support controllers on PC. 🙂 But personally? I’m looking forward to showing off m&kb controls! #space
Neither Mass Effect 2 or 3 had controller support for PC, so this is a step up from those games and welcome to people who prefer to use a controller for their gaming. Further, you will apparently also be able to switch between controller and mouse and keyboard control seamlessly. That means if you prefer using controller for one thing and mouse and keyboard for something else, Andromeda should be able to allow you to do that with little problem. Hopefully.
There’s plenty more news to come about the game before it finally releases on March 21 in North America and on March 23 in Europe, so stay tuned.
As Overwatch continues to be played by many and new updates are applied to rebalance the meta and introduce new characters, as well as add content for events, so will bugs also slip in every now and then. Some become known as exploits to allow people to do things they shouldn’t.
A new one has come to light in the last few weeks, in which players found a way to use Mei’s ice wall ability to push players through walls into areas designated as out-of-bounds. Obviously this allowed for hiding players to attack enemies without much danger to themselves, and that sort of ruins the match for everyone. Now Blizzard have located and apparently squashed the bug, and have promised that those found to have been intentionally using the exploit to give themselves an advantage will see punishment.
“This bug was surprisingly tricky for us to track down but we believe we have identified a fix.” wrote game director Jeff Kaplan on the game’s forums. “Our hope is to have it fixed… but there is always the chance that our fix could fail. We’re currently testing to verify the fix. This bug is clearly an exploit and we consider this cheating. Do not attempt to reproduce this bug. We will be taking action against those who abused this exploit… exploiting game mechanics like this comes at a cost to those you are competing against. We take aggressive action against people who abuse game mechanics, hack or cheat. This case is no different.”
Already people are reporting that they’ve found their accounts suspended for having used the exploit, and one Reddit user has reported that they’re on a week long ban for it.
Ever since robotic technology became a mainstream thought, people have imagined a future where robots would deal with all of the housework in the home, or even help clean up in the office environment, so that us humans wouldn't have to. LG Corporation wants to make some of these dreams a reality, today unveiling a trio of intelligent robots at CES in Las Vegas, which together offer attendees a glimpse into a future where robots can help you around the house, make sure you catch a flight on-time, mow your lawn, or clean-up trash at the airport.
The LG Hub Robot (Image Courtesy LG Newsroom)
The trio of robots are part of the company's movements in developing Internet of Things objects; and are designed to showcase LG’s advancements in artificial intelligence. Leading the pack is the Hub Robot, a robot designed to interact with a household through voice-recognition technology and an anthropomorphic design. Hub's "face" is an interactive display which can show a wide variety of information; and even express emotions using a digitised face.
The Hub Robot connects to other smart appliances you own; then, using Amazon’s Alexa voice recognition technology, the robot can be instructed using simple voice commands to perform tasks such as turning on air conditioning, setting a washing machine, or any other task made possible by the smart gadgets in the home. The robot can also "speak" to guide you through recipes or provide you with information in addition to what's on screen; and the robot can even respond using simple body language like nodding. The Hub Robot also contains a built-in camera; and can be programmed to recognise different family members and respond to them in different ways, for that more personal touch.
But LG isn’t just interested in building robots to help you around the house; and for the second part of its technology triple-punch, the company has unveiled two robots designed for use in the Airport. The Airport Guide Robot is exactly what the name suggests – already being prepared for deployment in Seoul’s Incheon International Airport, this robot is designed to help travellers by answering their questions in English, Chinese, Japanese or Korean; and can offer directions, provide detailed flight information like boarding times or the gate location, scan a passenger's ticket or escort you to the gate itself. It can even tell you what weather to expect when you arrive at your destination.
Joining it is the Airport Cleaning Robot, which LG describes as "a super-sized robot vacuum". Using a combination of smart light sensors, multiple cameras, and sensitive bumpers, the Airport Cleaning Robot offers enough cleaning power to clean everything from carpeted floors to tiles – all while avoiding obstacles and passengers to provide the most effective performance in crowded airports.
On a very similar tangent, the company's final offering is the Lawn Mowing Robot, which uses the same advanced sensors and bumpers as the Airport Cleaning Robot to map out a user's garden and avoid obstacles, hedges and trees as it trims the grass. According to LG, this robot is ideal for all types of yards and uses its fast-moving blade to trim grass safely and accurately.
All of these robots are now on display at LG's CES booth in Las Vegas, alongside other gadgets such as a smart refrigerator with Amazon Alexa voice-recognition tech and a razor-thin television set. Needless to say, 2017 may prove to be a stellar year for technological advances.
