Impact Gaming who were in the headlines this week for removing R0SS from their online roster have moved quick to snap up another player, one some of them are very familiar with in the shape of Polish star wiadro. Wiadro was in the headlines prior to CIC7 with questions over his loyalty being raised, however after he answered in style with a dominant performance for YYT at the event and tonight has confirmed he will be moving back into Impact, for whom he played at CC5.

Following CIC7 he moved into Easymode and with their demise he found himself looking for a new home. Ironically his home would come in the arms of Impact manager eVo who was quick to lambast the behaviour of Easymodes players only to pounce upon the availability of Wiadro to fill the hole in his team. This comes contrary to a public conversation the impact manager partook in at CIC7 stating he would never have the pole in his team ever again.

- Update -

Impact Gaming manager eVo did not confirm this news. Krosan went to have a talk with him to figure out eVo's side of the story:

Clanbase Eurocup Sup Killerboy has tonight justified his decision to remove Easymode from this seasons Eurocup. The move has enraged the Easymode side who are claiming they broke no rules and should be playing.

In Short Killerboy states:

Quote

Because perfo and wiaderko were never available to play during weekdays, azatej is not playing, and tekoa left the clan, EM was left with a lineup that could only play on a single day which is bad and they weren't even adjusting at all to playing dates... and with the statement from the players that the clan "seems dead" the decision was to remove them for inactivity instead of "planning for mischief" the better way to put it would be "not planning to play" either way they would have forfeited their matches or played with backups, in both cases they wouldn't have passed. For both me & Homer and an EM Player, we want to make it clear that they were kicked BECAUSE they can not play on days that they WOULD need to play on, they were destined to forfeit-loss every game and the removal is the best option in that case and especially with an attitude of "we can only play sunday deal with it" it left us with no choice of using the delete button.

Read the full post on Clanbase

Easymode declined to give a statement on the matter.

Clanbase have today removed Easymode from the Clanbase Eurocup after fielding weakened sides in an attempt to gain GamesTV.org riches beyond their wildest dreams according to an inside source.

In a story that has all the ingredients of the current betting problems plighting the Korean Starcraft scene, Easymode have intentionally fielded a weakened side for two matches straight and bet on the opposition (Impact & Rockit). Though the match against Impact eventually rescheudled, and now forfeited the intention was during both matches to field a side that could not compete with the likes of Impact & Rockit without making it public knowledge to rake in the money on GamesTV.org. The allegations are backed up by Wiaderko & Meez's GTV bank statements.

In the end the sides plans were outed from the inside as all was revealed, the side had no intention of practicing for their matches and were planning mischief for their third eurocup fixture upcoming combined with their earlier attempts at winning money on GTV, leaving EC Sup Killerboy with no option but to remove them.

It leaves Group C with just four teams left after Frogz dropped out of the Eurocup due to inactivity.

Impact gaming find themselves looking for a 5th (online) player tonight as R0SS found himself at the center of a bitter clan versus country row. The Impact lineup still fighting in the Clanbase Eurocup have found themselves already shuffling the pack collecting Razz from Colt45, and the irony is it was that move that set the whole chain of events off.

Ross took charge of the UK team after the depature of Kamz, with the UK just one match away from the final. His decision to practice tonight with the UK team ahead of the game against Estonia ended in a debate with his manager eVo, one that left him with the ultimatum, Impact or the UK - not both. Ross chose the UK a decision that has left him both out of Nations Cup and out of Impact. Ironically however, Ross would never have taken the captaincy had Impact not plucked Razz from Colt 45, leaving Kamz to quit his roll as UK Captain.

On the decision, eVo had this to say:

"OK myself and Ross had a strong disagreement over whether he should be calling off prac's for Impact to prac for the UK, as far as i am concerned my responsibility is to Impact and making sure we are prepared as possible for LAN, i took objection to Ross's attitude and he took objection to mine, we probably both overreacted in hindsight, didn't help i was in a bad mood before the argument but i stand by my position which is that the team comes before NC however I understand he has a responsibility to the team"

When questioned about the fact eVo himself is a former UK Captain:

"Yes and I appreciate the issues that come with captain, however thats just being on the other side of the fence for you, anyway I think possibly we both maybe overeacted but that happens sometimes"

Two camps Ross wont find comfort in are the colt 45 camp, nor anywhere near Jere who can still remember his very public ousting from YoYoTech prior to CIC7.

Impacts Lineup to attend AEF remains, as it did prior to todays decisions:

snoop
mystic
sheep
gifty
sqz

Starcraft 2 has been in private beta for a couple of months now and is finally ready for shipping! The Blizzard CEO has stated July 27th will be the release date for the anxiously awaited sequel.

Blizzard stated:

""We've been looking forward to revisiting the StarCraft universe for many years, and we're excited that the time for that is almost here," said Mike Morhaime, CEO and cofounder of Blizzard Entertainment. "Thanks to our beta testers, we're making great progress on the final stages of development, and we'll be ready to welcome players all over the world to StarCraft II and the new Battle.net(R) in just a few months."

The beta has been welcomed widely by those playing it, with many old Starcraft players and eSports fans lapping up the sequel as opposed to many FPS sequels which have fallen on deaf ears. The game however is unlikely to be welcomed by the Korean Starcraft Pro's - due to ongoing arguments with KeSPa, Blizzard has not issued the organisation with a license for Starcraft 2 and as such both its leagues and the countries top teams and players will not playing it.


Activision may be getting sued by former infinity ward workers due to unpaid royalties, but the company still has other eggs on the Call of Duty stove and plans to release installment number seven this winter.

The game titled, Call of Duty Black Ops developed by Treyarch will be released on the 9th of November this year and follows on with Activisions promise to publish a new CoD game each year. Players take the role of a Black Ops operative who will be involved in missions behind enemy lines. Missions will take place in a variety of locations, including Cuba, the Arctic, and Vietnam. You can watch the trailer here

CIC7 champions Dignitas take center stage once again tonight as their EC campaign continues with a tricky fixture against perennial competitors TAG.

Dignitas

The most successful group of players to grace the game with their prescence would be about the most apt way of describing this team. They have been there done that and got the T-Shirt, winning CIC7 with a combination of style and sublime individual performances (inparticular from Night) the side has shuffled the pack since Enschede bringing back the effervesent Squall and dangerous Karnaj along with Jak at the expense of Scandinavians Matias & FeruS and Reload now multigaming with Dignitas' BF:BC2 squad. Regardless of match readiness they go into every match as favourites, tonights being no different.

TAG

Forest Gump once said, TAG is like a box of Chocolates, you never know which one you're gonna get. He's not wrong, TAG have a lineup of experience and potential as ever and on their day can shine as they did to claim one of the Intel One Day Cups prior to CIC7. That glory however is written in their history amid numerous stories of 'almost' and like clockwork with each new season, they've 'almost' always got what it takes to surpass the top dogs - this is the begining of a new story for TAG, will it be almost again or will this be the year for TAG?

In an astonoshing turn of events GameLimited have parted ways with their Call of Duty 4 team, Nexus. The seperation cites numerous disagreements between management and players, as per most multigaming organisation and squad severances. However in the most tabloid of all allegations, made from players to manager the former team are claiming to be leaving due to homosexual comments and actions made by their former manager.

The side gave the following quote to TEK9, "We left due to a problem i had with the founder of Gamelimited, oomjames. In the past we've already had some difficulties with him making gay remarks on behalf of the team and myself and we talked to him about that. But last weekend there was a bootcamp at his house and one of the members of Gamelimited wanted to sleep in his car due to the gay remarks, but oomjames didn't allow that and send the guy home immediatly. Oomjames couldn't give a decent answer why he did that, so the team and me decided to leave the organisation because of his childish behavior."

This perhaps the more politically correct of all versions given was then thrown into the dirty laundry cupboard by former player, piika, who when speaking to the homosexual remarks stated: "And the gay thing..I did show my balls, to make people get that vomit feeling, kinda as when someone posted my hawt ass. - Everyone would look away , exept James who would keep looking almost drooling. And then repeating the question ; piika, can I see your balls?"

Like any community would, the reaction to these allegations has been hilarious and you can read it in full on TEK9

eSports has taken the next step to becoming a real sport recently with a Serie A style match fixing scandal causing rifts in the home of eSports, South Korea. Several leading players are rumoured to be involved in the scandal that is under investigation and dates back as far as 2006.

The jist appears that the trend started with retired pro players using their influence and contacts with active players to find out information, the leaking of replays and tactics to the opposition for example. The investigation has gone as far as trauling through phone and bank records to see where people are connected to one another. In Korea it is illegal to publically name the accused until they are guilty, so dont expect anything until a full case is heard and it looks unclear as to whether the Police rather than just the leagues and player association are even involved.

Source: Team Liquid

The news gets worse for young Koreans as the government is to pilot a gaming curfew scheme for people of school age, between the hours of 12pm to 8AM according the BBC. The article suggests that gaming accounts will be linked to national identity numbers and will be enforced by the games providers.

The Crossfire Intel Challenge 7 is over, the biggest Crossfire event completed with an abundance of thrilling matches and a plethora of memories. From everyone at Crossfire we'd like to thank all the players for attending aswell as all of the spectators that came to visit and hope you had a great weekend. Heres a summary of everything that went down!

Enemy Teritory
Dignitas - €2500
Rockit - €1500
tMoe - €1000

Call of Duty 4
Fnatic €5000
Reason €2500
Power Gaming €1500

Quakelive
FeruS
butchji

ET & CoD Brackets

Coverage
- Crossfire
- CIC7 Gallery
- YouTube Videos
- TEK9
- Coverage Listing
- Cadred
- Cadred Event Coverage
- QuadV VODs
- Rockit Coverage

I would like to give a personal thanks to our Sponsor Intel for making this possible, Blockbuster.co.uk for their support, Dreamhack for the use of their fantastic computers. In addition our events simply wouldnt work without the expertise of YCN-Hosting & Ravenwood, nor the efforts of GamesTV.org or the other supporting coverage organisations and last but most certainly not least the admins that ran on empty all weekend long!

A late addition to the ET tournament for CIC7 will see Jungle Brothers en route to CIC7. After an ever so slight increase in capacity we were able to offer the spot down the ET waiting list and Jungle Brothers who had certainly made their desires clear are headed to the magical arena that is the WZZRD gaming center in Enschede this Friday!

Their lineup is as follows:

Lightning
abort
butchji
snoop
zerender

The dutch german mixture provides a great deal of CC experience with 4 of the former H2k champions from CC5 along with general star status from ET's history. Their experience will overrule their inactivity to make them one of the most feared teams in the tournament.

Lightning made the following statement:

"As you can see we pulled some brothers from the jungle to attend the upcoming CIC7 lan. We have had a long line of problems to come to this moment, where the biggest problem was getting all these players to attend which resulted in signing up late for lan and missing it due being full. Pracs stopped during that period as team, yet we did mix with all players in TAG games to keep our activity up. Few days ago we got the word that there was a spot available and here we are annoucing the team that needs to compete for the top 3. If this is possible due to less pracs then other teams, is something you will see at lan. For now we are happy to attend lan with the lineup we wanted. Cu at CIC7."