This Week in eSports

It has been a quiet week in the eSports industry with conferences between Blizzard, KeSPA, and Major League Gaming and numerous player signings occurring. There are still a few great things that happened over the week.

The Headlines:

MLG and KeSPA Announce Partnership: (From the press release) “Major League Gaming (MLG), the world’s largest competitive video game league, and the Korean eSports Association (KeSPA), announced today an exclusive multi-year global partnership that will bridge the Western and Korean StarCraft worlds. As part of the collaboration, KeSPA players will compete in MLG events—marking the first time in eSports history that KeSPA players will participate in video game tournaments in the United States.” For those unaware, KeSPA is the organization that served as the driving force behind the success of Starcraft: Brood War. This means that we will be seeing former Brood War professionals transferring to Starcraft II over the course of the next year and hopefully helping Starcraft II grow even larger.

Gamer Bar Opens in Paris: A surprising announcement arrived this week when Meltdown, a bar in Paris, opened. This bar is dedicated to nonstop streaming of games such as Starcraft II, League of Legends, DOTA 2, and Diablo 3. Pending the success of this establishment, we may see a rise of gaming-related bars in the future. You can visit Metldown’s Facebook page here, and their thread on TeamLiquid here.

Dreamhack Eizo Open Information: One of the biggest eSports tournaments in the world, Dreamhack, has released a ton of information regarding their upcoming tournament. While this is an event held in Europe, there will be free high-definition streams that anyone around the world can enjoy. Check out their post on TeamLiquid here.

Upcoming Games:

Major League Gaming:

All available on http://tv.majorleaguegaming.com/

Invite-Only Qualifiers-NA: Friday, 5/11 at 1:00PM EDT

Invite-Only Qualifiers-EU Region: Saturday, 5/12 at 1:00PM EDT

Invite-Only Qualifiers-EU Region: Sunday, 5/13 at 1:00PM EDT

Video of the Week:

While I’m not a particular fan of TotalBiscuit, I will never deny that he sometimes presents some very intelligent ideas. In this installment of “The Mailbox,” he talks about professionalism in the eSports industry (skip to 9:30 if you want to get right to it).