Earlier today, the final 6 finalists for the Intel Extreme Masters 5 European Championship were determined via relegation, joining the 6 that had already advanced due to winning their groups.

With the panel of finalists complete, teams will be preparing to head to Kiev (Ukraine), at the Kiev CyberSport Arena on January 20-23 where they will be battling it out for a prize purse of $50,000.

IEM5 European Championship Finalists

Frag eXecutors
fnatic
Lions
Na´Vi
SK Gaming
mTw
mousesports
MYM
Full-Gaming
Electronic Sahara
Alternate
Cph Wolves

Stay tuned to CompLexityGaming.com for the official group drawings for the event which have not yet been announced.

In a shocking move earlier today, SK-Gaming have announced the acquisitions of both Christopher “GeT_RiGhT” Alesund and Patrik “f0rest” Lindberg from fnatic.

Yesterday, rakaka.se reported a possible move for Robert “RobbaN” Dahlström and Jimmy “allen” Allen from SK Gaming to Fnatic, however the news today disproves those claims. With this addition, Rasmus ‘GuX’ Ståhl and Andreas ‘moddii’ Frid have parted ways with the team and now stand as free agents.

SK for 2011

Robert “RobbaN” Dahlström
Jimmy “allen” Allen
Johan “face” Klasson
Patrik “f0rest” Lindberg
Christopher “GeT_RiGhT” Alesund

More information on this transaction can be found at SK-Gaming.

ESFI World today has announced the launch of their new website after several years of anticipation from the community. E-Sport Fans International was founded in 2007 by Brent Ruiz and Gene Angel to address the need for an independent, impartial e-sports media company. ESFI have announced that they plan to provide quality coverage for a number of games, including StarCraft 2, Counter-Strike, Quake Live and Super Street Fighter 4.

Below you can find the official release from the organization:

San Diego, CA – ESFI World is proud to announce the release of their new competitive gaming media website, ESFIWorld.com. Since revealing its preview tour in August of 2008, the ESFI World platform has undergone significant changes in development in an effort to streamline the user experience. Sporting an entirely new design, the website now comes packaged with improved event coverage hubs and tools for content creators to promote their own work.

“After much too long of a wait, ESFI World is finally here,” said founder Brent Ruiz. “The journey we’ve taken to get to where we are today has been an incredible learning experience for all of us, and we are confident we will accomplish the goals we’ve set for the company.”

Co-founder and VP of Marketing Gene Angel described the driving force behind the creation of ESFI World: “One of our primary goals was to meet the needs of the competitive online community where others weren’t. Our platform allows users to follow their favorite players and teams, easily access tournament results and enjoy quality, original content. ESFI is built with tools to help content creators promote their own work to a broad e-sport audience. Not only can you track content related to any player or team, but you can also track content by any author you want to see more from.”

ESFI World launches with support for four competitive gaming titles: StarCraft 2, Counter-Strike 1.6, Quake Live and Super Street Fighter 4. Additionally, ESFI has formed a powerful partnership with GamesCast TV, the only interactive e-sports TV station that offers users a simple way to watch live broadcasts for their favorite games and broadcasters. The collaboration allows ESFI to bring viewers live, event-specific broadcast schedules for streams in real time.

About ESFI World

ESFI World is an unbiased, independently-owned media platform dedicated to the growth and unification of e-sports (or competitive gaming) on an international level. ESFI offers engaging original content, dynamic player and team profile pages, innovative tournament coverage and a stage for content creators to promote their own work.

ESFI on Twitter: www.twitter.com/esfi
ESFI on Facebook: www.facebook.com/esfiworld
ESFI on YouTube: www.youtube.com/esfiworld
Learn more about our Partner Program: www.esfiworld.com/downloads/partners/Partner-Program.pdf 

To visit the ESFI Website, click here.

Early today, ESWC announced the opening of registration for ESWC 2011. According to the official release, the event will once again be held in France, however the actual venue, city and date is not yet known. Unlike last year, the event will be held towards the end of 2011 as opposed to the summer.

Also, the ESWC has announced a $6,500 increase in prize money, from $213,500 to $220,000. The official press release can be found below:

Orléans, France – December 2nd, 2010

The best gamers all around the world will be able to enter in a new ESWC season and try to qualify for the 8th Electronic Sports World Cup™ 2011 Grand Final (ESWC 2011).

The Grand Final will be held in France by the end of the next year (November/December 2011). Final date and venue will be announced early 2011.

The ESWC 2011 will reward winners with a total prize of $220,000. In 2010, Games-Solution was the first company in electronic sport that used a bank guaranty to insure players they will get their recompense. Following the success that the community shown for this process, the same system will be settled this year.

The games selection is still in process and will be announced soon but every player interested in participating in ESWC preliminaries can from now register and sign up for their national preliminaries here.

The ESWC organizing committee
www.eswc.com

More information about the event and information on signing up can be found by clicking here.

The ESEA S7 LAN Playoffs and Finals took place two weeks ago in Dallas, Texas. The event saw EG secure the championship for CS and eMg for TF2. Now, ESEA has announced Season 8 of their ESEA-Invite league.

With this announcement, Starcraft II will be joining CS 1.6, CS:S, and TF2 on the official game list. SC2 will follow the same format as the other games in league play, however additional details are not known at this time. There will also be a raise in the prize money from $56,550 to $60,000, with $5,000 of that being devoted to SC2.

The official post which includes several changes can be found below:

After another successful LAN final with Counter-Strike 1.6, Counter-Strike: Source, and Team Fortress 2, we’re happy to announce ESEA League Season 8 which will feature over $60,000 in cash prizes, Starcraft II, and free Mumble servers and a LAN event for all Invite division playoffs. Season 8 will also feature a number of improvements based on user and team feedback from Season 7.

Registration for S8 is now open and will remain so until Monday, January 3rd, 2011 at 11:59pm CST. Once registration closes there will be a week for teams to get acquainted with the system and to schedule their first matches, which will begin Sunday, January 9th, 2011.

Key Changes From Season 7 to Season 8:

– Increased prize pot from $56,550 to $60,000+
– Addition of Starcraft II division
– Every registered team will receive a free Mumble VOIP server
– Increased number of League servers on new hardware to ease scheduling availability

Features of ESEA League include:
– Two matches per week for all divisions
– Complete web match scheduling
– SMS scheduling alerts
– All matches played on our ESEA servers across eight locations
– Protection from our industry leading anti-cheat / config locking Client
– Helpful team of handpicked paid league Admins who are active in each community
– Complete box scores and stats for EVERY match (just as we have for pugs and scrims)
– HLTV and SourceTV demo downloads for every match within 5 minutes of matches finishing
– Automatic live HLTV and SourceTV for every match (unlimited number of spectators)
– Automatic live irc scorebots for every match
– Automatic POV demo recording
– User prediction system for every match
– LAN event for all Invite division playoffs
– You build your permanent league record

The first major change for S8 will be the addition of Starcraft II. This is obviously uncharted territory for us, but we wouldn’t be branching out unless we were confident we could provide a quality, competitive, event for the already thriving SC2 community. We’ve acquired the necessary licenses, will be putting up a $5,000 prize pot, and have already begun assembling a very qualified team of both SC2 admins and players and will be seeking community input over the next few weeks before SC2 registration opens.

Second, we’re taking another huge step and will be providing free Mumble servers to all teams who sign up for S8. In addition to that, the soon-to-be-released ESEA Client 4.0 will feature an integrated Mumble client which will make managing a team and playing competitively not only easier, but more affordable. We’ll be announcing more details on this in the coming weeks, but from our initial testing it’s coming out quite slick and, as expected, JaguaR is up to his usual badassery.

Team move ups and move downs, a full prize pot breakdown, as well as the map rotations will be announced within the coming weeks so be sure and check back often.

More information on this can be found by clicking here.

After an intense day of action, the Dreamhack Grand Finals saw a familiar face as the Ukrainian powerhouse of Na`Vi took on Denmark’s best in mTw.

On the fist map of de_inferno, Na`Vi was able to secure a lead that they would never led go of as they managed to take mTw to a 9-6 first half score. In the second half, it was all Na`Vi as they won 7 straight to clinch a victory in the first map by score of 16-6.

Next up was de_train where mTw looked to counter Na`Vi as they tied the first half score at 7-7 before dropping the final round to Na`Vi to make the score 8-7 in favor of the Ukrainians. In the second half, Na`Vi showed why they are considered by many to be the world’s best team as they finished off mTw by the score of 16-11.

With this win, Na`Vi has won Dreamhack 2010 where they will take home $14,100 SEK in cash as well as a KVD gift card worth the same.

1st – Natus Vincere – $14,100 + KVD gift card worth $14,100
2nd – mTw – $4,250
3rd – Lions – $2,800
4th – Frag eXecutors

The Dreamhack Winter 2010 tournament in Jonkoping, Sweden, is well under way and after a full day of action yesterday and today, 16 teams have advanced to the playoff stage where 16 teams will battle it out for 100 000 SEK, 1 x Gift card from KVD.se and 5 MSI Big Bang Motherboards, which will go to the first place winner.

The usual suspects have all advaned to the playoff stage, including SK-Gaming, Na`Vi, Fnatic and mTw.

fnatic
Millenium
mTw
Lions
Full-Gaming
SK Gaming
RAGE
alchemists
Electronic Sahara
munkka
x6tence
Na´Vi
puta
.no
Frag eXecutors
HWA

More information and full coverage of the event can be found at HLTV.org.

With the Kode5 Brazilian Regionals taking place later this month in Curitiba, Brazil, the organization has announced the official match list.

CompLexity, Firegamers and CNB are all expected to be the front runners of the 32 team event, with MiBR out of Kode5 action as they compete at Dreamhack Winter in Sweden which happens to take place during the same period of time.

The first matches for the event can be found below:

Round of 32

CNB Gaming vs. Embrali
aX vs. 4C
TBD vs. CariocaX
Winners.Games vs. strongesT
puNch vs. waytoomany
Kurushi.hai vs. zero7olerance
SyS! vs. PuM!
ADRENALINE51 vs. rampage Killers
HARD DIVISION vs. Suricatos Clandestinos
FATALITY vs. g0 game owners
eXecurity vs. by mav
EXECUTION vs. FireGamers
Clube dos Ninjas vs. GW.ZOWIE
All4frag vs. AUTHORITY
TBD vs. brutaLity
:V vs. compLexity

More information on the event can be found by clicking here.