Dear Guild Member,

Welcome to the seventh edition of our monthly newsletter!

Our spring season has finished up with winners crowned in every title. The finals were, as predicted, absolute bangers, and I’d personally recommend checking out that CS2 final if you’re looking for some entertainment.

On top of that, we’re kicking off our Office Showdown right now! A first of its kind in Ireland, companies register their own team to play in the tournament and compete against other companies in a format similar to our collegiate-level events.

If you’re an alumnus working at a company, have a look around: maybe you can pick up some teammates! Check out www.officeshowdown.com to learn more.

As for the rest of this newsletter, we’ve put together some industry news, some gaming news, and an interview with Yannick “retsol” Gloster, now available on our Spotify Podcasts and Apple Podcasts.

As always, keep an eye on alumni.irelandcollegiate.com.

Industry News 🗞️

• FaZe picks up 2021’s best esports athlete in Counter-Strike: This wasn’t really on anyone’s bingo card, but FaZe has picked up s1mple, widely regarded as one of the best (if not the best ever) Counter-Strike players of all time. The team had been struggling in the last few months, but many thought roster changes wouldn’t come until after the major. To make things even more surprising, s1mple has been out of action since the release of CS2, so things just got very exciting.

• Fortnite is coming back to the iOS app store in the US: Following years of back and forth between Epic Games and Apple, Epic Games has come up with yet another win against one of the biggest tech companies in the world. Epic Games put a lot of pressure on Apple with allegations that the company was abusing its market position to force developers into using its own payment systems and taking a 30% cut, and similar movements in the EU forced Apple to allow the installation of third-party app stores.

• Team Fortress 2 is alive and well: In a rather surprising move, Team Fortress 2 will be playable at EPIC 45 in the UK, following many requests from the community. The game was released in 2007, and Valve recently open-sourced the TF2-specific code that sits on top of the Source engine to allow modders to build new experiences and even push bug fixes. Nearly 20 years later, the community is still going strong!

A celebration of Irish video games - inside the FÍS Games Summit

Video games are at the crossroads of all culture – fact. They bring together the brightest and sharpest creators from across entertainment to provide us all with unmissable experiences. From writers, actors and musicians, to artists, coders and more, their combined efforts have made it the multi-billion-dollar industry we know and love today.

As a nation of storytellers, it should come as no surprise that Ireland has a growing stake in the growing gaming empire. And this could not have been more evident at the annual FÍS Games Summit in Galway this April.

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

Spring finals results!

The spring finals have been and gone, and we have a new set of winners crowned in every game. There are familiar faces, of course, but these are the teams that took home first and second place and solidified themselves as the champions… until September, that is, when many of them will attempt to defend their throne.

A big congratulations to all of the teams that won the event, and a thank you to everyone who played. Without you, these events wouldn’t be possible, and the last few years have been amazing in the collegiate scene so far.

For some stories of what we’ve been through, be sure to check out this month’s podcast. I’m so proud of everyone here, and everything that we’ve done, and we’re only getting bigger and better every season.

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

- Adam