The world of esports is quickly growing and Overwatch is no stranger to the competitive league. However, it is not easy to get started as a professional. Blizzard understands that the future stars of the Overwatch League have yet to be discovered. To help them make their mark, Blizzard is creating opportunities for players to prove themselves.
For the amateurs and aspiring professionals, Blizzard has announced Overwatch Contenders. Beginning this summer in North America and Europe, this development league aims to bring high-level competition to the west.
If a team of players feels like they have what it takes, Season Zero of Overwatch Contenders begins with an open signup. From there, an online-only qualifier will determine the top eight teams from each of the two regions. Each tournament has a prize pool of $50,000.
In North America, the top six teams will join pro teams Envy and Rogue for six weeks of round-robin play in Overwatch Contenders Season One. The top four teams from this group stage will advance to an offline playoff bracket with a price of $100,000. In Europe, the top eight teams from Season Zero also compete for six weeks as part of Season One. The top four teams will play in their own offline playoff bracket for $100,000 as well. However, cash isn’t the only prize on the line. Organizations will be scouting the events for players to fill their rosters before the launch of the Overwatch League.
Even if a team does not make it into this year’s Overwatch Contenders, they will still have additional opportunities during the Overwatch Open Division. This tournament series will take place around the world. In 2018, winners in each region will have the chance to move on to the next season of Overwatch Contenders.
Anyone with a team full of high ranks is encouraged to hear to the Overwatch Contenders website to register and find more information.
The Call of Duty franchise has held a special place in my heart ever since I played my first Black Ops game back in 2010. That game's campaign was something else, with twists and turns that culminated in a mind-blowing finale. We can all admit that compared to those older campaigns, the recent CODs have been lackluster at best, and a complete and utter disappointment at worst. The reboot of Modern Warfare did give me some hope, as the first two installments were actually quite good, but the third game left such a bad taste in my mouth that I wasn’t exactly expecting much from Modern Warfare 4.
After recently finishing the campaign, I can say that this installment is nothing like the recent releases and instead feels closer to the franchise’s roots. For the first time in a long while, the campaign comes across as well-crafted rather than rushed to hit a release date. It arrives three years after MW3, and you can see exactly where all that time went. It seems the studio finally made listening to player feedback a priority.
Epic Games has just announced the 2026 Epic AI MegaJam, which is looking to see how much game development can be squeezed into a very short window. This is running from November 12 through November 15.
Participants can work alone or in teams of up to five people, build in Unreal Engine or Unreal Editor for Fortnite, and bring along “as many AI agents as you want.” Epic explicitly encourages coding agents, AI-generated assets, audio tools, writing tools, and other AI systems. The official event page literally says "Vibe your way to $50k.”
It’s turning into a pretty good time to be a Monster Hunter fan who plays on a phone. Capcom has confirmed that Monster Hunter Outlanders will launch on Android and iOS on October 29, giving the series a new mobile-first game just as Monster Hunter Rise is also preparing to make the jump to smartphones through Netflix.
Outlanders is being developed by Tencent subsidiary TiMi Studio Group under license and supervision from Capcom. Unlike Rise, which appears to be the full console and PC game adapted for mobile, Outlanders is a free-to-play survival hunting game made specifically for phones.