SK-Gaming has announced the signing of their frist StarCraft II Player.

Fredrik “MaDFroG” Johansson decided he wanted to come back to play StarCraft II, it took him and SK just 20 minutes to figure out the details of his contract. Fredrik won the 2004 Blizzard Worldwide Invitational and was a finalist at ESWC 2003.

MaDFroG will be playing two show matches this weekend at the Blizzard Regional Finals in Cologone. His frist competition will be at GamesCon, which is also taking place in Cologne.

“When I decided to give StarCraft 2 a real try and the community got notice, I was contacted by most of the bigger teams out there. It was when SK was reaching out to me that I had the feeling you need to have as a player. It took us 20 minutes to figure out details and here we are, I am back in SK and I am proud of that. Thanks to the team in trusting me after such a long time and thanks to SK’s partners that made the deal possible. Though I am not at a 100% competitive shape right now, both, SK and I know that I will get there in the future. It feels great to be back!” – Fredrik ‘MaDFroG’ Johansson, SK SC2 Player

“It must have been 2004, when I was passing over the trophy for eSports player of the year to Fredrik if I remember correctly. He is the perfect addition to our roster of players, a true world champion and what a great name in the community. Together we will try to achieve a lot of great things. Titles and placements of course, but also a lot for the community. Fredrik and SK have a lot in common when it comes down to things like that and you can expect some nice features in the near future.” – Alexander T. Müller, Managing Director of SK Gaming

Here is the video of MaDFroG and Sk-Gaming making the deal official.

Coming this September GomTV presents Global StarCraft II League. For the remainder of 2010 there is $500,000 in prize money planned. GomTV is planning on having monthly tournaments that will lead into a main tournament and a world championship for GSL 2010 and GSL 2011.

Every month there will be an Open StarCraft II League with $170,000 in prize money. Five days a week, matches will be broadcasted live on GomTV. All players will be divided into upper and lower league based on their performance in 2010 for 2011.

The former StarCraft Leagues ran 4 different leagues at once, so the players had hard time focusing. Even the fans will be able to enjoy it more with many games a week. Before, only players in progaming teams were able to participate, but anyone can participate at a professional level in this league. Nationality and team involvement is not necessary as long as players have the skills to do well in the monthly leagues and move up to the upper league. –  Oh Joo Yang, GomTV e-sports representative

Prize Money

 Winner: $85,700 USD
 Runner-Up: $25,700 USD
 Semi-Finalists: $8,600 USD
 Quarter-Finalists: $3,400 USD
 Round of 16: $1710 USD
 Round of 32: $430 USD
 Round of 64: $260 USD

You can find out more about the rules, schedule, format, eligibility and more at Teamliquid.

In a recent announcement, social gaming platform XFire has been purchased by Titan Gaming from Viacom’s MTV Networks. Titan Gaming has stated that they plan to retain the current functionality of the service, however they plan to add features such as online betting and competitive tournaments related to their business model.

XFire was originally purchased in 2006 by MTV Networks for the sum of $106 million. With over 17,000,000 registered users and 180,000 concurrently online, XFire has proven itself to be one of the most popular gaming clients in the world. Though the client-base has deminished over the years, the addition of video streaming and recording has made XFire the all-in-one tool for gamer networking and social media.

Titan had the following to say on XFire’s website:

Titan will be taking on the Xfire name, with a focus towards ongoing innovation in the gaming space. The Xfire services will continue uninterrupted for its users. Xfire redefined how gamers communicate, Titan intends to build upon this tradition and utilize the Xfire platform to help gaming companies better engage their users. We look forward to continuing and expanding upon the Xfire service.

For more information on XFire, visit the Official XFire Website

ESL has announced the Intel Extreme Masters American Championship will feature $59,600 in prize money. The event will be taking place in New York City in early October.

Counter-Strike leads the three games with $36,800. StarCraft 2 warps into the scene with $12,400 and QuakeLive rounds out the tournament’s $59,600 with $10,400 of their own. Each game will have eight teams or single players. The only way to attend is to qualify. There will be sixteen teams and players who will advance to the group stage. From the group stage we will get the final eight. There will be additional prize money in the group stage to help teams get to NYC for the finals.

The top finishers will then advance to the Intel Extreme Masters World Championship, which will have a $400,000 prize purse.

UPDATE: For the StarCraft2 specific stuff, there’s $10,000 available for the eight finalists at the LAN Finals plus $2,400 for online qualification. After the current Cup qualification, there will be four groups of four with every map win worth $25 and Group Winners earning $75. The winner of each group earns a spot at the American Championships while 2nd place and 3rd place must face for relegation matches between groups for a spot in the American Championships.

Current Qualified Players are Silver (Cup #1 Winner), Huk, qxc and Thisisjimmy. There are three remaining cups that will each qualify four players each.

Monday, August 23, 2010 djWheat will be hosting a special episode of “Weapon of Choice” which includes broadcasts of last qualifying cup’s Finals match along with a selection show. DJWheat will be publicly drawing the groups to allowing all players to see who they will face in the Group Stage Live On-Air. Group Stage Matches will take place August 29th-30th.

For more information, visit the Official ESL Website