Plus Forward posted an interview with cherepoff (Andrey Cherepanoff, 30, IT, Moscow) ahead of the 250 FPS QL League Season 5 finals on August 29. He finished group play in the last six and draws pavel in WB R1.

Toughest opponent this season: AGENT.

He constantly pushes with the rocket launcher while dodging. If you don't deal a critical amount of damage right away, he just starts chasing you all over the map.

Most exciting match: his series vs pavel. Predicted champion: cYpheR.

I think after last season, Alexey is laser-focused on taking top 1.

On rapha: you can out-aim him in spots, but one shake and you lose map control.

It felt like rapha plays very aggressively and with total confidence.

What he needs vs that:

nerves of steel.

He does not use aim trainers; he practices in-game because Quake movement does not copy well into them. He rarely gets weekends free around work, so match-day form is the tradeoff. Original Russian interview is on the 250 FPS Telegram.

Source: Plus Forward

Scheduled: 16:00 UTC, 23 August 2026 to 20:00 UTC, 23 August 2026
Schedule: Passed

EGB QC Cup #6 is Sunday, 16:00-20:00 UTC: Quake Champions time-limit duel, double-elim, Bo3. Prize pool is $50 ($40 / $10).

Maps: Awoken, Blood Covenant, Blood Run, Corrupted Keep, Deep Embrace, Ruins of Sarnath, Tower of Koth, Vale of Pnath, Vestibule of Exile.

k1llsen took Cup #5 last weekend without dropping a map. Cup #4 went to Strongsage.

Streams from the usual QC names when they go live: k1llsen, st0n3, Keltz.

Bracket: egb.com

Source: Plus Forward

Scheduled: 11:00 UTC, 22 August 2026 to 18:00 UTC, 22 August 2026
Schedule: Passed

koMnoT Cup TDM 2v2 is running now: QL 2v2, double-elim, Bo3, 11:00-18:00 UTC. Prize pool is 100,000 RUB (~$1,209): 60k / 30k / 10k.

Ten teams. Maps: Almost Lost, Bloodrun, Campgrounds, Devilish, Hidden Fortress.

As of WB semis, AGENT and ash are through after a 2-0 over k1llsen and Spart1e. cYpheR and pavel are in the other WB semi against danches and rell. k1llsen and Spart1e dropped to losers.

Streams: Cypher, k1llsen, mstshambler, AGENT.

Bracket: shambler.site

Source: Plus Forward

Keltz went undefeated through NAQCL Duel Tournament #68, a $100 QC time-limit duel cup on August 15, then 3-0'd dramiS in the grand final.

He never dropped a map in winners: 2-0 Anorky, 2-0 Thri11er, 2-0 dramiS in the WB final. dramiS came back through losers, 2-0'ing Yup in the LB final for the rematch. Keltz swept it. Yup took 3rd, Thri11er 4th.

Prize pool was $100: $50 to Keltz, $30 to dramiS, $20 to Yup. ChurchOfQuake's VOD is on Plus Forward. NAQCL #69 is later today.

Source: Plus Forward

QuakeHub put up a monthly "State of Quake" dashboard that rolls every live-polled Quake game into one page: peak counts, maps, servers, modes, a world map, and Twitch.

August so far (the month is not over): 8,058,178 real-player frags, 125,193 hours played, 507 players online on average, and a peak of 1,009 at once on August 16 at 18:00 UTC. 984 servers hosted a real match (2+ humans and a frag). A typical poll still sees 2,281 bots.

Average concurrent players by game: Quake Champions 214 (Steam concurrent; QC has no dedicated servers in this poll), Quake Live 199, Quake III Arena 66, Quake II 26, QuakeWorld 17. Everything else is in the low single digits.

Deathmatch is 36% of play, Clan Arena 27%, duel 10%, TDM 9%. Servers sit mostly in the US (29%), Germany (24%), and Russia (14%). 2,300 different maps got played. QL Thunderstruck leads map time at 8%, then Campgrounds and Blood Run.

The fullest single match was 63 players on Japanese Castles at [a2m] Quake Like Carmack Used To Make (QL, August 8). Busiest server by hours is IZI PUB#1 16v16 CA.

Twitch peaked at 1,803 viewers on August 16. AGENTJKEZOOR ( AGENT) had the most days streaming Quake (8). One-night peaks: marcrebillet 1,132, then JeanFaymas, iXBT_games, rapha, Maynarde, k1llsen.

Source: QuakeHub - The State of Quake

Two EGB cups from last week, one in Quake Champions and one in Quake Live.

On August 13, k1llsen & rapha went undefeated through the upper bracket of EGB Cup 2v2 #2, a QC TDM event with a $160 prize pool. They 2-0'd Creeep & Korshun, 2-0'd DesiRo & Thri11er, then 2-0'd ins & Keltz in the WB final. ANTOWKA & st0n3 dropped their opener, then won four straight in the lower bracket, including a 2-1 vs ins & Keltz in the LB final. Grand final: k1llsen & rapha vs ANTOWKA & st0n3, 3-0 ($112 / $48). k1llsen's winner POV is on his YouTube.

On August 15, AGENT won EGB QL Cup #66, his second title in the series after #65 a week earlier. He went 2-0 vs H3LLDOWN, 2-0 vs cherepoff, then 2-1 vs cYpheR in the upper bracket final. Grand final rematch: AGENT vs cYpheR, 3-0. k1llsen finished third after going 0-2 vs cYpheR in both WB round 3 and the lower bracket final. Prize pool was $53: $40 to AGENT, $10 to cYpheR.

EGB QC Cup #6 is this weekend. EGB Cup 2v2 #3 is listed for September 12.

Sources: Plus Forward (2v2), Plus Forward (QL #66), EGB 2v2 #2, EGB Cup #66

Marty Stratton has told Windows Central that id Software is still making its own games and is not dropping id Tech.

Jez Corden's piece, published yesterday, is the studio's first detailed public account since Microsoft's July cuts. It sits next to comments from former VFX/technical art producer Andrew Willis, who was among those laid off after finishing Doom: The Dark Ages and the Revelations DLC.

Willis described a July 6 Microsoft Teams call: about 95 people, cameras off, chat disabled, everyone muted except Stratton.

I received a Microsoft Teams invite, there were about 95 of us, no cameras on with chat disabled, everyone muted except (Executive Producer) Marty Stratton. He took about 50 seconds to say that if you were on this call, your positions were eliminated. He said it wasn't a reflection on our performance.

He also said Xbox never told the studio what success looked like.

They never explained anything. They never told us what metric they wanted, which is extremely confusing given Xbox Game Pass. If there was something they wanted (downloads, playtime, Game Pass subscriptions, etc.), they never told us.

It was frustrating to get laid off before we even saw how successful the Revelations DLC was. How can you lay off a team right before they release what gets called 'their best work yet'?

Stratton, 26 years at id, called the layoffs "emotion and pain" and said that is not diminished by talk about the future. He rejected the rumor that id would become a support studio or move to Unreal.

We're all in on id Tech; we're not moving to Unreal Engine.

He said MachineGames is staying on id Tech too, and the two studios will work closer on the stack. On size, Corden writes that id has lost more than half its staff and is roughly as large as it was for Doom (2016). Willis called that line damage control.

This has been one of the most frustrating mischaracterizations I've seen. It is just damage control. Id is now objectively smaller than it was during 2016. They also fired 2/3rds of the folks that were left from 2016; these would be the people who have the experience needed to make a game like that.

Stratton pointed at QuakeCon and at whatever ships next.

We've always persevered as a studio. We're going to again, we're going to continue to make great games, with great technology.

The verdict is going to be in how we move forward, what we deliver to fans, and whether or not that meets the bar.

Willis's last note was for players: support the developers. CWA's Save Our Devs action was at the Richardson office on August 18; more protests are planned.

Source: Windows Central

Scheduled: 11:00 UTC, 20 September 2026 to 20:00 UTC, 4 October 2026
Begins In:

House of Quake is running the QL European Nations Cup - Fall 2026 across three Sundays, one mode each week. Everything is played online.

CTF 4v4 - Sunday 20 September, 11:00-20:00 UTC Infinity, Ironworks, Japanese Castles, Spider Crossings, Troubled Waters

Duel 1v1 - Sunday 27 September, 11:00-20:00 UTC Aerowalk, Bloodrun, Cure, Silence, Sinister

TDM 4v4 - Sunday 4 October, 11:00-20:00 UTC Dreadful Place, Hidden Fortress, Limbus, Purgatory, Ragnarok

Nations, rosters and signups are handled in the House of Quake Discord: houseofquake.com/discord

Source: Plus Forward

The live streams box in the sidebar has been broken since 28 February 2022. That is the day Twitch switched off the old v5 API that fed it, and it has quietly reported "no live streams found" ever since.

It works again. Streams now come from Twitch's current API and refresh every two minutes.

What is new:

• The sidebar shows the eight most-watched streams, biggest first, with a link to the rest.
• Quake channels that were not being tracked have been added, along with tournament and community organisers: QuakeCon, QuakeCon BYOC, Quake Pro League, QuakeWorld, Quake Club, Quake Canada, Quake Brasil and QUAKE LATAM. Those only appear when they actually go live.

If your channel belongs on the list, or you know one that does, say so in the comments and it gets added.

Full list: Live Streams

Laid-off and remaining id Software staff are back at the studio's Richardson office today for CWA's Save Our Devs action, 11:30 local at 1500 N Greenville Ave. It is one of eight coordinated rallies across the US and Canada, including Austin, Rockville, Hunt Valley, Redmond, Minneapolis, Albany, and Montreal.

A Texas WARN filing in July put the id cut at 136 of about 185 jobs: 96 on site, 40 remote. CWA Local 6215 organized the studio wall-to-wall in December 2025. Producer Andrew Willis, laid off in that wave, spoke at the first Richardson rally on July 15.

"I don't think it's right what they're doing to these folks and to show people the door after so many loyal years of producing great value and providing service to the company. We're going to use this time to organize and fight back."

On the studio itself:

"The people that had that institutional knowledge of how to execute that; the people who have that information in their head are all gone. It's really unclear to me how they'll proceed at the same bar that folks are used to."

CWA District 6 vice president Derrick Osobase named the damage in the union's July 7 statement:

"It is our CWA members who make the games that make Xbox valuable. Today's layoffs decimated the teams at id Software, Bethesda Game Studios, and ZeniMax Online Studios, legendary studios whose employees brought us games like Doom, Quake, Elder Scrolls, and Fallout."

CWA president Claude Cummings Jr. added:

"When Microsoft decides to treat the workers who built Xbox as expendable, it should know who they're dealing with."

The ask today is the same as last month: layoff protections and first contracts. CWA says it brought those proposals months ago and Microsoft sat on them. The union filed an NLRB charge on July 15 (16-CA-390759) over discretionary layoffs. Texas workers are still being paid through Sept. 4 under WARN, but Willis said they were already locked out of company systems.

UVW-CWA is streaming the actions on Twitch. CWA media: Sean Nesmith, [email protected].

Source: Action Network (Richardson), Save Our Devs campaign, KERA, CWA, Texas AFL-CIO, Game Developer / WARN

Scheduled: 11:00 UTC, 29 August 2026 to 20:00 UTC, 29 August 2026
Begins In:

The group stage of 250 FPS QL League Season 5 is over after 11 round-robin weeks, 66 matches, and 154 maps. AGENT and cYpheR both finished 10-1 and take the top seeds into the double-elim finals. k1llsen is 3rd at 9-2. cherepoff, pavel, and ash take the last three slots.

WB R1 on Sunday, August 29 at 11:00 UTC is cherepoff vs pavel, then k1llsen vs ash. AGENT and cYpheR sit in the winners semis. Lower bracket is Bo3, winners Bo5, grand final Bo7. The champion gets $1,000 from a $5,500 season pool.

baksteen and Spart1e missed the six-man cut at 5-6 but locked Season 6 group-stage spots. Furious Heights (20.8%) and Silence (18.8%) ate the map pool; Aerowalk was picked seven times, Vertical Vengeance once.

Bracket, streams, and results: Plus Forward, 250fps.com

Source: Plus Forward

k1llsen went undefeated through EGB QC Cup #5 on Sunday, then 3-0'd danches in the Quake Champions time-limit duel grand final.

The weekly EGB cup was an $80 double-elim bracket, Bo3 until the final. k1llsen never dropped a map in winners: 2-0 over danches in WB R2, 2-0 Yup, then 2-0 Thri11er in the winners final. danches took the long way back, beating creeep, klyb, cYpheR, Yup, and Thri11er out of losers before running into k1llsen again at 19:15 UTC. The rematch was a sweep. Thri11er finished 3rd, Yup 4th.

"another EGB Cup in the pocket this time Quake Champions DUEL," k1llsen posted after the match. His winner POV of the full cup is up on YouTube.



It is k1llsen's second solo title in the series after Cup #3, and it comes a day after he and rapha 3-0'd ANTOWKA and st0n3 to win EGB Cup 2v2 #2.

Source: Plus Forward, EGB, k1llsen

Rockstar Games and Netflix are teaming up for "Grand Theft Auto VI: An Extended Look," a new video presentation premiering exclusively on Netflix Thursday, August 27 at 3 p.m. ET. It's the first major game trailer to debut on a streaming service rather than YouTube. Patience pays off for non-subscribers: the same video hits Rockstar's YouTube channel and the official GTA VI site six hours later, at 9 p.m. ET.

What it'll actually show is unconfirmed. No GTA VI trailer so far has included gameplay, but the extended format has fueled speculation it could go beyond a cinematic trailer into mechanics or on-screen UI. Netflix's VP of Nonfiction Series, Brandon Riegg, called the partnership recognition that "Grand Theft Auto reveals have become cultural moments in their own right."

The game itself is confirmed for PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S on November 19, 2026, capping a development cycle Rockstar has been running for 13 years.

Source: Grand Theft Auto VI: An Extended Look - Rockstar Games

Multiple market-research firms released updated esports industry sizing this year, and they don't agree by a wide margin. ResearchAndMarkets puts the current market at $3.6 billion in 2026, growing at a 20.8% CAGR to $7.7 billion by 2030 -- but a separate ResearchAndMarkets release projects growth all the way to $17.42 billion by 2031, an implied 29.8% CAGR. Grand View Research lands closer to the conservative end ($3.3 billion in 2026, $12 billion by 2033), while Mordor Intelligence puts today's market well above the rest at $5.34 billion, growing more slowly (4.89% CAGR) to $6.78 billion by 2031.

The spread comes down to what each firm counts. Analysts note that including gambling and streaming revenue alongside traditional esports income (sponsorships, media rights, tickets, merchandise, publisher fees) roughly doubles the estimated market size, from around $3.3-3.5 billion up toward $4.8 billion or higher.

What the reports agree on: sponsorship investment, digital viewership, and major tournament ecosystems (this month's Esports World Cup finale in Paris among them) keep expanding. How big that translates to in dollar terms depends entirely on which report you read.

Source: E-Sports Market Report - Research and Markets, Esports Market Size Report - Grand View Research