6.2.11

NESL launches LoL with $35,000 in prizes!

Hello everyone.

I'm just on here today to inform you all that NESL is opening a LoL division with a prize pool as high as $35,000 dollars for 2011. You might even make a name for yourself in the process. I really suggest you guys head to this link and grab your buddies, form a team, and sign up ASAP.
http://www.nationalesl.com/us/gettingstarted

NESL has put together the chance for 8 of the top qualifying teams (and possibly more in the future) to play against some of the top LoL teams by region in the EU for a chance to win up as much as 5000 Euros. Qualifiers for this are beginning soon so sign up quick. And not only is that not the only event, there are others running to win up to $100 a week. What it comes down to is: You could easily make a sizeable bit of cash on LoL and settle some of that US vs EU rivalry that's been brewing as of late.

The exact date of the events can be seen here:
http://www.nationalesl.com/us/lol/news/148300
http://www.nationalesl.com/us/news/148315

Sign up quick as there's a scrim night coming up for the Wednesday, February 9th to get better seeding in the qualifier brackets. It is open to anyone so you can take your shots at all those high ELO jerks you guys in ELO hell are always talking about.

The prize money of just the first event is about $7000 and that's just the first to come, there will be more in the future.

Tencent has bought Riot Games for about $400 million

Tencent, the giant Chinese Web holding company, has bought Los Angeles-based Riot Games for about $400 million.

It’s yet another big-dollar buyout for the game industry, which has been in an M&A frenzy for about a year, and one of the biggest investments by a Chinese company in an American digital property.

The transaction was first reported by Bloomberg, and Riot confirmed the deal to VentureBeat, though neither outlet has the financial details. Here’s how they break down, according to people familiar with the transaction:

Tencent, which had already invested in the game-maker, will pay “just south” of $400 million to buy out other investors, primarily Benchmark Capital and FirstMark Capital, who along with angels had put approximately $18 million into the company.

The company’s management team will receive some portion of that buyout themselves, but will also retain an equity stake; some will receive “stay packages.”

The total investment values the company at $472 million.

The chief appeal for Tencent is Riot’s League of Legends game, which is free to play initially, but which encourages players to pay up for skills, equipment, etc, via micro-transactions.

In that sense it’s like Zynga’s Farmville and other popular social games. But it’s a much more sophisticated game with arcade-style action: Think of World of Warcraft, on steroids and amphetamines.

The deal follows a string of Web-based game deals in the last year. Among the more notable ones: Walt Disney purchased Playdom, Electronic Arts purchased Playfish and DeNA purchased Ngmoco.

More info : China Digital Times