Recentely, the new startup project, involving CS superstar Filip ‘Neo‘ Kubski, has announced the last pickup, also of AGAiN fame, Jakub ‘kuben’ Gurczynski. The lineup is now complete for the new project, and can be seen below.

Below is the new lineup in comparison to the previous AGAiN lineup.

The AGAiN Lineup:

Filip ‘neo‘ Kubski
Wiktor ‘Taz‘ Wojtas
Jakub ‘Kuben‘ Gurczyński
Łukasz ‘Luq‘ Wnęk
Mariusz ‘Loord‘ Cybulski

The Guns are Drawn Lineup:

Filip ‘neo‘ Kubski
Mariusz ‘loord‘ Cybulski
Jarosław ‘Pasha‘ Jarząbkowski
Wiktor ‘Taz‘ Wojtas
Jakub ‘kuben‘ Gurczynski

The official website of Guns are Drawn can be found at http://www.gunsaredrawn.com/

This past weekend during MLG’s Halo event, an Xbox 360 failure may have cost a team a chance in the upper bracket finals.  During the deciding moments of the upper bracket semi-finals match between Classic and Trigger’s Down, one of the Xbox 360 consoles froze. At the time, Trigger’s Down was leading the series by a score of 2-1.  Major League Gaming rules state that if any equipment malfunctions during a game, the match must be restarted and replayed. During the rematch, Classic was able to take down Trigger’s Down and advance to the Upper Bracket Finals, where they were defeated.

The incident was caught on video and can be viewed here.

ESEA has announced that their Season 5 Playoffs will be held during a LAN event, much like the last two seasons. It will be held in conjunction with Intel’s LANFest series, which is set to take place on March 12-14 in Dallas, TX. This event will showcase the top teams from CS 1.6, CS:Source, and for the first time, Team Fortress 2, from ESEA’s invite division. This will be ESEA’s first LAN finals that will be showcasing all three games. The countries top gamers will battle it out for their piece of the $45,000 prize purse. Below is an excerpt from the official release:

The event will be held in conjunction with Intel’s LAN Fest series and feature a modest BYOC in addition to a tournament area showcasing the top CS 1.6, CS: Source, and TF2 teams from our invite divisions. Fans and ESEA community members can enjoy a weekend of nonstop gaming and watch the country’s top gamers battle it out for their piece of the $45,000 prize purse.

This event is the first official ESEA community gathering and another step forward as we look to host larger BYOC events with more lead time for subsequent seasons across the country. With about 20 events scheduled for 2010, Intel LAN Fest hosts BYOC events from Boston to Portland with all proceeds being donated to charity. To date Intel LAN Fest has raised over $314,000!

More information can be found at http://www.esea.net

The next iteration of the famed SourceRadio has gone live with a “lite” version of the site.

Gamers have had rough patches in the past in regards to video sites, where CSFlicks died not once, but multiple times, and GotFrag’s Game Room never really went mainstream for PC users. Outside of Noob Flicks and SourceRadio, there hasn’t been much of dedicated video sources for gamers.

And finally, once Source Radio had shut its doors, many gamers thought it might be the end of showcasing their talents and viewing the latest creations from other dedicated gamers in a complete user experience.

That changed when it was announced that owner of SourceRadio, now The Movie Vault, Erik Kehl, was putting together a completely new site from scratch. He had this to say in today’s press release:

Welcome to the new “lite” version of The Movie Vault, make yourself at home. Before you start scratching your head wondering what’s going on I think I should take a moment to show you around what’s live, and give you a heads up on what is yet to come. If this is your first time back to The Vault since I closed in August, I highly recommend you read this introduction.

First things first, no this is not the “whole” website, that is why this is considered a “lite” version and not even a beta. What you are seeing is a look into the new styling and ease of use functions being applied to the new website. The core functions such as searching, browsing, playing videos and so forth is all intact and don’t worry, I didn’t forget to include the high definition streams. But what is missing is all the user functions most have grown to love, the question is why?

This site has been created from the ground up; I scrapped the remains of what was once “SourceRadio” and started new. I did this primarily because the old site was cluttered, years of code and let’s face it, I learned along the way. The new site is built for the user; the new interface will allow easy navigation, attractive styling and a ton of new features. So many new features in fact, that I can’t release the full site quite yet.

The rest of the press release, as well as the entire “lite” version can be seen here

Just recentely, Fnatic has announced that Rasmus “Gux” Ståhl will be parting ways with the team. Many saw this coming, as GuX and Fnatic were forced to miss Arbalet due to personal reasons on Ståhl’s behalf. This leaves the team with a 4 man roster, and only speculation as to who the new 5th will be. Below is an excerpt from the official Fnatic release:

With Rasmus in the team, our Counter-Strike squad became arguably the greatest team of all time, racking up almost 200,000$ and 6 Major titles in one year. They have attended eight major events, winning six of them and having only one placement out of the top two for the entire year!

Rasmus joined us in January 2009, a relative newcomer surprising many who weren’t sure if his skills could match the renowned Fnatic players. Over the year, he has proved many wrong and has turned into an allstar of the game. Unfortunately, things don’t always work out outside the game as they do in-game.

It was a tough decision, but after much deliberation the team collectively has decided to let him go. It’s extremely important for the team to work together for the same goal, and are at all times tight friends outside the game, as well as in-game. Any conflicts cause strife and upsets the rhythm of the teams game. Gux and the rest of the team grew apart towards the latter half of the year, which lead us to our current situation. He is still one of the best players in the world, and will be a great threat for us in the future when he no doubtly joins another team.

Fnatic’s Current Lineup

Patrik “cArn” Sättermon
Patrik “f0rest” Lundberg
Harley “dsn” Örwall
Christopher “GeT_RiGhT” Alesund