Fnatic are out of Worlds 2026. GIANTX beat them 2-1 on 30 August in the last LEC Summer regular-season series, so they miss Summer Playoffs and the last three European Worlds spots.

The LEC account called it the first time Fnatic have ever missed Summer Playoffs. The postseason streak went back to 2013. Worlds appearances had been uninterrupted since 2017; they last sat one out in 2016. They won the first Worlds in 2011 and made the 2018 final.

Summer opened 0-3, then three wins (SK, Shifters, G2), then three losses ending with GIANTX. Eighth in Versus, seventh in Spring. Roster churn all year: Oscarinin, Humanoid and Mikyx out; Vladi, Empyros and Lospa in; Soboro replaced Empyros for Summer. Razork is in year five.

Fnatic on X: "A heartbreaking end to our 2026 season." Their VALORANT side already missed every international this year.

Source: Shane the Gamer

cYpheR talked to baSe, LeXeR and Shambler on the 250 FPS Russian stream after 4-1'ing AGENT in the Season 5 grand final. Plus Forward translated it.

On yesterday's 2-3 winners-final loss, then today's 4-0 on the maps they played:

Yesterday I tilted very badly. I wanted to throw or break something.

I think yesterday I lost to myself. I was rushing.

One hundred. I am not going to pretend otherwise - one hundred out of one hundred.

He changed the Lost World red-armor read after AGENT kept stealing it on timing. Chat told him to ban Bloodrun; he did. First pick after Vertical Vengeance came out was Aerowalk. AGENT's "jokers" he named: Lost World and Bloodrun.

On pressure:

You smell blood - and it carries you forward.

AGENT does the same thing. If you get caught in his claws, he pushes you into an endless series of traps.

He said the final was "surprisingly comfortable" because AGENT was not at his peak. On hours vs twenty years (pro at sixteen):

Let them play as many hours and as many tournaments as I have, and then we can compare.

Next goal: win an Estoty or EGB Cup in Quake Champions. "At the moment, I can barely do anything in the game." Who he wants in 250 FPS Season 6:

Bring rapha here. I want revenge.

Name the date and time. Send me location.

Source: Plus Forward

rapha and maxter went unbeaten through EGB Cup 2v2 #3 and 3-1'd Keltz and serious in the grand final. $100 QC TDM: $70 / $30. Map record 7-2.

They opened 2-1 vs that same pair in WB R1, then 2-0'd ANTOWKA and st0n3 in the winners final. Keltz and serious came back through losers, 2-1 over ANTOWKA and st0n3 in the LB final, then lost the rematch.

k1llsen and rapha took Cup #2 two weeks ago. This pairing is the regular rapha/maxter tandem (KeenCon, Estoty 2v2). Keltz and serious play Quad-barrelled League WB R1 on Saturday.

Source: Plus Forward

Adam "SyncError" Pyle posted in the official Quake Discord that he is back on Quake Champions as of Monday, 31 August, for four weeks to finish the 1.31 update.

Back to work on Monday, for four weeks to wrap up the 1.31 update.

Not a new contract, and not a permanent return.

Not a contract, I'm just not being laid off (yet).

He said the extension only "delays the inevitable." No balance work, and not enough time to ship public lobbies. The job is existing 1.31 work.

He was in the July id Software cuts. After that the community petitioned for him to stay on QC; it passed 1,000 signatures.

Source: Plus Forward

cYpheR came through losers and 4-1'd AGENT in the 250 FPS QL League Season 5 grand final. AGENT had a one-map lead from the winners bracket. Maps played: Silence 9-4, Aerowalk 11-5, Lost World 7-1, Furious Heights 4-1. $1,000 / $500 from a $5,500 season pool.

cYpheR opened 3-0 vs k1llsen, then lost the winners final 2-3 to AGENT (Lost World, Vertical Vengeance, Bloodrun, Furious Heights, Cure). In the LB final he dropped Vertical Vengeance 5-9 to ash, then took Lost World 7-2, Bloodrun 13-5, Furious Heights 7-5.

Third 250 FPS grand final between these two. cYpheR 4-0 in Season 2, AGENT 4-3 in Season 3, now 2-1 for cYpheR. Fourth straight season final for him: won 2 and 5, runner-up 3 and 4.

3rd ash. pavel 4th after beating k1llsen 2-1 in LB R1, then 0-2 ash. cherepoff 6th: 3-1 pavel in WB R1, 1-3 AGENT in the WB semi, 0-2 ash in LB R1.

Source: Plus Forward

About 12TB of Steam content from 2003-2013 is circulating as a torrent of old Steam2 depots: retail builds plus betas, prototypes, trailers, demos, and soundtracks. Valve has not commented.

Dataminers Gabe Follower and Scolcer say this was not a hack. Steam2's content endpoint was public until Valve switched to SteamPipe in 2013.

No hacking involved, just verified that everything in Steam2 Teraleak was obtained via a publicly accessible [API] endpoint. It's Valve's fault...

Gabe Follower, on X.

Reported Valve material so far: a playable Portal 2 build from 2009 (TF2 stand-in assets, cut GLaDOS and Cave Johnson lines), Left 4 Dead and CS:GO prototypes, assets from F-Stop (the canceled Portal prequel), and a weapon also seen in old Half-Life 2: Episode 3 footage. There is no confirmed Episode 3 game in the dump.

The archive is not Valve-only. Hidden Palace has listed obtainable third-party prototypes including Spec Ops: The Line, Civilization V, Mafia 2, and GTA 3. A depot name list is hundreds of titles wide; that is not the same as extracted playable builds. Tyler McVicker called the third-party slice more legally dangerous than Valve-only files.

Source: Ars Technica

Xbox CEO Asha Sharma told the BBC that the next console, Project Helix, has to chase "efficiency and affordability alongside performance." She would not say whether Helix ships a disc drive. Dev kits are not due until 2027. Helix is described as a console/PC hybrid.

As an industry, we're in the middle of 'Rampocalypse'.

RAM and storage prices are up because AI data centers are buying the same chips. Microsoft is one of the buyers. Xbox already hiked current hardware this month: UK Series S 512GB to £430 (from £250 at launch), Series X 1TB with disc to £670 (from £450). The translucent green 25th Anniversary Series X is $899.99.

We've reached a point where it will be hard to imagine that mass audiences can afford thousands of dollars to spend on a console generation.

That line is from June. In the BBC sit-down she added that Xbox will look at "how they play their console and how they purchase their console," and at "hardware efficiency in terms of how you use storage and memory." In June she also floated "radically different business models" later this year. No detail on what that is.

Same interview: disc-to-digital. Insert a supported Xbox One or Series X disc, claim a digital license. About 1,000 titles at first. Insider test starts 31 August. The license follows the disc if you sell it. Sharma tied it to backwards compatibility on future hardware.

Within Xbox, we haven't been healthy.

Source: BBC

Inner Circle dumped Vitality 2-0 in the BLAST Open Fall Group B opener in Copenhagen. HLTV had Inner Circle at #34, Vitality at #4. jL stood in for mezii (paternity leave). Prize pool is $1.1 million. Groups run through 31 August at BLAST Studios; playoffs are in Porto, 4-6 September.

Anubis 13-8, Inner Circle's pick. Vitality's T half was 5-7; ZywOo went 0-7 to start. Cache, Vitality's pick, went to OT. Vitality led 6-0 then 12-7 and still lost 13-16. cptkurtka023 was 43-30 (1.58), headtr1ck 42-24 (1.37). ZywOo finished 27-36 (0.78).

Today we were mentally much, much stronger.

onic, to HLTV.

Same event, Group A (26 August): M80 2-1 NaVi (NaVi took Anubis 13-4, then 6-13 Mirage, 6-13 Inferno), G2 2-0 Aurora, Spirit 2-0 DENDELE, FURIA 2-0 paiN.

Inner Circle play MOUZ next in the Group B upper semi. Vitality drop to 9z in the lower bracket. Three teams per group make Porto.

Streams: BLASTPremier

Source: HLTV

Two weekly Quake Champions duel cups this weekend, plus EGB 2v2 on Sunday.

Estoty #215 - Friday 16:00 UTC, 28 August 2026 to 20:30 UTC, 28 August 2026. $100, double-elim, Bo3 / Bo1 losers / Bo5 grand final. Streams: ShaftasticTV, Keltz, st0n3, Strongsage. Plus Forward, EstotyCups.

NAQCL #70 - Saturday 18:00 UTC, 29 August 2026 to 21:30 UTC, 29 August 2026. Ping uncapped. Same day as 250 FPS S5 finals day 1 (that one opens at 11:00 UTC). Streams: dramiS, Strongsage, st0n3, Yup, ChurchOfQuake. Plus Forward.

EGB Cup 2v2 #3 - Sunday 16:00 UTC, 30 August 2026. $100 QC TDM. Plus Forward.

Source: Plus Forward

Thri11er won NAQCL Duel Tournament #69, 3-1 over dramiS in the grand final. $100 pool: $50 / $30 / $20 to klyb.

He went through winners: 2-1 vs dramiS in WB R3, 2-1 vs klyb in the winners final. dramiS won three straight in losers, including 2-0 klyb in the LB final, then lost the rematch.

First NAQCL title for Thri11er. ChurchOfQuake's VOD is on Plus Forward.

Source: Plus Forward

Gamescom Opening Night Live 2026 wrapped in Cologne. Two hours of trailers, plus a separate Nvidia GeForce drop the same day.

The closer was The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Remastered, a free upgrade, with new footage of the Songs of the Past DLC. Other headline reveals: Heroes of Might and Magic 3 Remake, Path of Exile 1.0 on December 11 (free-to-play), Metro 2039 for February 2027, Exodus April 7 2027, Ananta January 15 2027, Rainbow Six Tactics in 2027, and a Gears of War: E-Day story trailer. Control Resonant, Turok Origins, Crazy Taxi multiplayer, Rayman Legends Retold (October 1), and a free Hitman World of Assassination Snoop Dogg DLC on August 27 also showed.

On the PC side, Nvidia shipped DLSS 4.5 Ray Reconstruction through the Nvidia app for all GeForce RTX cards (Game Ready 580.88 or newer). It is a second-generation transformer model that folds denoising and Super Resolution into one pass. Launch override list is 30 games, including Cyberpunk 2077, Alan Wake 2, and DOOM: The Dark Ages. RTX Mega Geometry, six years of work on ray-tracing Unreal Engine 5 Nanite at full detail, debuts in Gears of War: E-Day on October 6 and is headed into Microsoft's DirectX Raytracing 2.0. Control Resonant (September 24) and 007 First Light (path tracing update September 15) were the other tech showpieces.

Full rundown: TechRadar. Nvidia notes: GeForce.

Source: TechRadar

Keltz took two Quake Champions time-limit duel titles this weekend, both against St0n3.

On Friday he won Estoty Duel Tournament #214 ($100: $40 / $25). St0n3 beat him 2-1 in the winners final. Keltz 2-0'd Thri11er in the losers final, then reversed it 3-1 in the grand final. ShaftasticTV has the VOD.

On Sunday he went unbeaten through EGB QC Cup #6 ($85: $68 / $17), 2-1 in the winners final then 3-0 in the rematch. Map record 9-1. St0n3 took 2nd after 2-0'ing dramiS in the losers final.

It is Keltz's second EGB QC Cup after #2, and his fourth duel win since August 8: NAQCL #67, NAQCL #68, Estoty #214, and this. Through six EGB QC Cups, k1llsen leads with three titles, Keltz two, Strongsage one.

Sources: Plus Forward (Estoty #214), Plus Forward (EGB QC #6)

cYpheR and pavel went unbeaten through koMnoT Cup TDM 2v2 and 2-0'd AGENT and ash in both the winners final and the grand final. Ten teams, 100,000 RUB (~$1,200): 60k / 30k / 10k.

They dropped one map in four series: Almost Lost in a 2-1 WB semi over danches and rell. Winners final was Campgrounds 74-36 and Bloodrun 83-70. AGENT and ash came back through losers, 2-0 over k1llsen and Spart1e in the LB final (3rd), then lost the rematch 0-2: Bloodrun 86-60, Campgrounds 62-55.

This pairing has now met in three recent 100k-RUB TDM 2v2 cups. AGENT and ash took GBNC (2-0, then 2-1). cYpheR and pavel took EGB Cup #50 (2-1 twice). Playoff head-to-head is now 4-2 for cYpheR and pavel.

Bracket: shambler.site

Source: Plus Forward

The approximate match schedule for the 250 FPS QL League Season 5 finals is out. Two days, not one: winners bracket on Saturday, 29 August, lower bracket and grand final on Sunday, 30 August. Both days open at 11:00 UTC.

11:00 UTC, 29 August 2026 - cherepoff vs pavel (WB R1)
11:50 UTC, 29 August 2026 - k1llsen vs ash (WB R1)
12:40 UTC, 29 August 2026 - AGENT vs winner of match 1 (WB semi)
13:30 UTC, 29 August 2026 - cYpheR vs winner of match 2 (WB semi)
14:20 UTC, 29 August 2026 - WB final

11:00 UTC, 30 August 2026 - LB semi (loser of WB semi 2 vs loser of WB R1 1)
11:30 UTC, 30 August 2026 - LB semi (loser of WB semi 1 vs loser of WB R1 2)
12:05 UTC, 30 August 2026 - LB R2
12:40 UTC, 30 August 2026 - LB final
13:30 UTC, 30 August 2026 - Grand final

Lower bracket is Bo3, winners Bo5, grand final Bo7. Champion gets $1,000 from a $5,500 season pool.

Times after the 11:00 UTC starts are approximate and may slip with match length.

Streams listed on the event page: ShaftasticTV, 250 FPS RUS, 250 FPS ENG, mstshambler.

Source: Plus Forward