Dear Guild Member

Welcome to the third edition of our monthly newsletter! This is the first edition for those of you who played in the Spring Semester earlier this year, welcome to the Alumni Guild.

The 2024/25 Winter Series is now up and running as we make our way through Week 1. The amazing news is that we’ve had a 10% increase in teams AND Teamfight Tactics is off to a good start with 30 players.

Whats more, the new season comes with our newly launched platform, Nemesis! Everything is developed in-house, and we really hope you like it. It’s been a lot of blood, sweat, and tears to get it put together.

As for the rest of this newsletter, we’ve put together some industry news, some gaming news, and a fun interview that we conducted with Liam “Slevo” Slevin, now available on our Spotify Podcasts and Apple Podcasts.

As always, keep an eye on alumni.irelandcollegiate.com. What? Heroic?

Industry News 🗞️

• Counter-Strike 2 gets a massive update: For any Counter-Strike fans out there, the latest update has brought some huge changes. While there are a ton of skins, huge swathes of the game have been reworked, from networking to models. Great stuff.

• Riot just removed BLEED from VCT Pacific: It’s quite rare to see companies calling out other companies so blatantly, and it’s even rarer in esports. Riot has removed BLEED from VCT Pacific, saying that it was “due to its failure to comply with critical reporting requirements and other key obligations under the Team Participation Agreement.”

• ESI Lisbon is a must-attend for an esports fan: If you’re ever looking to get a foot in the door in esports, we recommend checking out an ESI event. Last week, ESI Lisbon took place, and while I wasn’t there, I know plenty of people who loved it. It’s the place to be if you’re looking to get your esports career off the ground.

New Ireland Collegiate Leisure Items 🛒

From Zelda & Frostpunk to EA football – new video games reviewed

Autumn has been a busy time in the gaming world. There have been so many new releases, and only so many hours in the day to play them. And as we brace for the final few months of 2024, Barry O’Rourke asks the question of what new releases should you focus on?

Barry O’Rourke is an Irish journalist who covers the video games industry for RTÉ, Ireland’s Public Service Broadcaster.

Community Events 📅

Finding the various Irish esports communities across each of the different game titles isn’t easy, is it? As we continue to connect the dots of esports on the island we thought we’d help solve this problem.

First up, our friends running Counter-Strike, ICL, are partnering with GamerFest to run their qualifier for the live event with a €750 prize pool! It’s free to sign up, and the qualifier is taking place tomorrow.

24/25 Winter Semester Finals Tickets ☘️

You heard it here first, tickets for both days of the Ireland Esports Collegiate Series Winter Semester Finals Weekend on Saturday 7 and Sunday 8 December are now available to buy.

This current series is all about building on the new initiatives we put in place last year. Making them bigger and better. The Finals Weekends for Winter and Spring are a big focus for us, we want as many Alumni to join us as possible.

Thanks for reading, and share it with your Irish esports friends.

- Adam