5 Friends Made a Thing

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What's in this Lootbox?

• 🧸 5 Friends Made a Top Seller

• 💰 New $150M Games Fund

• 📈 ALGS $2M Esports Championship

• 📷 Meme

🧸 5 Friends Made a Top Seller

The above picture is a screenshot from a game called Hypercharge: Unboxed which just made the Top Seller list on Steam.

The crazy part?

It launched back in 2017.

5 Friends got together over their love of games and what appears to be Toy Story. Players play as Toy character in a toy store (just one of several maps) where you spawn inside the toy's packaging on a shelf.

They've been slowly building out the game since initially launching back in 2017 and they've hit an inflection point of hype. Spiking from 200 average players to over 1600 and landing on the top sellers list of Steam.

All of this recent momentum was sparked from 1 single tweet:

💰 New $150M Games Fund

Gaming venture firm Konvoy Ventures announced a new $150M fund focused on pre-seed, seed, and Series A rounds. The new round will help the firm expand into additional regions beyond North America.

Konvoy is probably best known for their investment into the web3 game Axie Infinity.

📈 ALGS $2M Esports Championship

The Apex Legends Global Series Championship took place in Raleigh NC this past weekend with a total prize pool of $2M, with the first place team taking home a cool $500K. The event also took place with a live audience making ALGS look like a big deal.

Even if you've never watched Esports competitions before this tournament had something for everyone.

We had late player substitutions due to players testing positive for covid, true underdog story, arrogant hot shot team that blew a massive lead, and semi cringe commentators.

The winning tournament took place on Sunday after qualifying sessions the previous days. There were 20 teams competing where each team scores points per match based on number of kills and their placement. Each match takes around 25 minutes. Once a team gets to 50 points they become match point eligible and if they just have to win a match to take home the trophy. The tournament ended after 9 matches with DarkZero winning back-to-back matches.

Arguably the greatest Apex Legends player today is @HisWattson who ironically does not play Wattson anymore in the game. He was on Team Furia which has a massive lead and became the first match point eligible team starting at match 6. But they blew they couldn't clutch an actual win cause they were too aggressive going for high kill counts trying to show off.

The underdog story is 100 Thieves who isn't typically known as a strong Apex Legends team (their founder is way more interested in VALORANT). The got sent to the losers bracket early in the weekend but eventually won the loser bracket with back-to-back W's. That made them eligible for the winners bracket on Sunday where they came from behind and took home 3rd place overall. You could almost say they were about to "steal" the championship.

There was also a heartfelt moment after the tournament for team TSM when they left the stadium. Watch it here:

📷 Meme

Thanks for Reading :)

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