Top Tekken 8 pro Arslan Ash shocked the FGC when he revealed that visa complications will keep him from Evo Japan and Riyadh Clash this year.

Arslan Ash shared the unfortunate news on X (formerly Twitter), where it was met with frustration from fans who wanted to see him compete as much as possible. These two big events are part of the Tekken World Tour.

“I will not be able to attend Riyadh Clash and Evo JP this year,” Arslan Ash wrote. “I made every effort to go, but unfortunately, I encountered visa problems again. It’s fine, I’ve learned to live with passport limitations; maybe one day, things will change.”

The Pakistani player has continued to deal with travel-related issues over the past few years of competition. Pakistan’s passport is considered weak due to its international restrictions. Many fans urged Arslan Ash to get citizenship elsewhere or apply to different visas.

Takayuki Kudo, President of Global Sense, sponsored Arslan Ash’s trip to Evo Japan in 2023. Arslan Ash ended up winning the event. After hearing of Arslan Ash dropping out of Evo Japan 2025, Kudo replied: “I regret that I should have been the one to make the move to ensure you came to Evo Japan, which would have increased your chances of obtaining an entertainment visa.”

Arslan Ash thanked Kudo for his words but told him not to blame himself. He added: “We will succeed next year.”

Without Arslan Ash present, Evo Japan 2025 has a lot of hungry pros that could rise to the top of the Tekken 8 tourney. This includes Kakeru, Daigo Umehara and Tokido from Japan, Big Bird, AngryBird and EndingWalker from Europe and the Middle East, and Punk, Nephew, NoahTheProdigy, and MenaRD from the Americas. It’s still bound to be a wild tournament for the FGC to watch.

Evo Japan 2025 is coming May 9th to May 11th, 2025.

Valve has silently dropped a big update for Dota 2 in March 2025. These changes will shake up how high-level players interact with the game, and their ramifications will trickle down to the general player base. However, it isn’t related to anything in-game. Immortal Draft games will no longer appear in public match history, and replay access to these games is restricted to their participants.

In short, the top percentile of players are isolated in their private bubble. What happens to the pros, analysts, coaches, and players dependent on this data? More importantly, will most players even care? Let’s dive deeper into this update.

On March 20, 2025, Valve updated Dota 2’s Immortal Draft:

Hiding the match data for 8500+ MMR players will severely disrupt third-party Dota 2 tools and websites. Stat-tracking platforms like Dotabuff and Dota2ProTracker relied on public match history and web API access to collect data from high-level matches. Without this information, it’s impossible to get enough statistics to make a fair, data-driven assessment of hero trends, item builds, and win rates in that bracket.

Esports Insider has contacted Plattttt, the developer of Dota2ProTracker, to ask how the changes affected the website. “They initially affected me a lot because 8.5k upwards is basically THE MMR bracket I was focusing on.” Moving forward, Plattttt has chosen to focus on three features for the website: first, working with the data available from 7k to 8.5k MMR; second, adding and working with tournament data; and third, offering a replay parsing service where high MMR players can upload matches.

Valve hasn’t released an official statement explaining why these changes were made. Plattttt commented: “Nobody I talked to from the scene KNOWS why they did this. Everyone has their theories and I heard 5-6 different ones at least already, all completely different.” He goes on to describe issues like metas being figured out and becoming stale, complaints about match-fixers, betters, and win traders, pro players acting inappropriately in pubs, and smurfing. 

These are all issues that plague high MMR matches. Win trading and griefing were prevalent when Doubledown tokens were available, but it’s still a problem. As for smurfing, many pros use alt accounts to hide what they play in pubs, despite being a bannable offense. But pros rarely smurf to bully lower-rated players, they use it to give themselves privacy. They can hide what heroes they’re practicing and what items they’re experimenting with. Meanwhile, betting on pub matches doesn’t seem to be the issue, as Valve has partnered with betting sites in the past.

The easy access to data provided by third-party websites was a shortcut to analysis for pro teams. Using stats, metas were figured out quickly, but it was also reinforced as players refused to touch heroes with a less-than-stellar winrate. Pros copied pubs, pros copied other pros, and players copied pros, until the meta stagnates before the next major patch.

Many Dota 2 esports players, coaches, and analysts lament the overall loss of information and its effect on the community, but are positive about it for Dota 2 esports. PARIVISION’s coach, Astini, is a vocal advocate for it. 

In an episode of ALL CHAT, Astini talks about how creating an idea will be more valuable and encouraged because of it, as these changes will stop other teams from preemptively preparing against it. Insania and Quinn share their own experiences about how their experimental ideas in pubs were immediately shut down in tournaments, even though they were never shown off in official matches. 

On the other hand, Insania raises the concern that gatekeeping information prevents the competitive scene from getting better. He mentions that players like Puppey and KuroKy were so successful during the earlier years because players couldn’t decipher what they were doing fast enough. Quinn agrees and states that the overall quality of gameplay will go down or increase at a significantly slower rate.

These information gaps will cause teams to exert more effort to collect data. Instead of optimizing for strategies ahead of tournaments, Dota 2 esports professionals need to bring their ideas and quickly adapt to the ones their opponents are showing. The replays and data are still available to manually collect and parse through, and esports teams will need to find their ways to handle that. Information once presented fairly for all will now be a battle of secrecy and espionage, where the team with more resources always wins.

While Valve’s March 2025 update targeted the top 0.5% of Dota 2 players, its impact cascades down to the broader community, stripping away tools that casual and aspiring players rely on. The removal of public match data for Immortal Draft games means less transparency, less information, and ultimately, less improvement for everyone else. 

Team Liquid’s Saberlight had this to say about the API changes: “I don’t like it. I feel like even if you make the best argument for it—which is that teams won’t copy each other’s ideas and will foster creativity, I don’t know why ordinary Dota players have to pay the price…I think the cost of hiding stats is just way too high.”

Analyst Sheepsticked, now known as Reya was similarly frustrated by the change. 

She also makes a good point that watching professional matches isn’t a good source for learning, as their environment is vastly different from pubs.

Iconic guide maker Torte De Lini admits that the API changes will make their work take too much time, and considers quitting after 12 long years. 

Guides will depend on the author and are subject to biases and outdated information. Third-party websites made practical information available for everyone in real time. 

Likewise, content creators who make educational content and replay analysis videos will lose access to a wealth of information. However, channels that only post VODs without anything transformative are welcome to find more productive uses of their time.

Valve’s changes to Immortal Draft can be summarized as a change that gatekeeps information. Blocking information could help Dota 2’s esports scenes, as the battle of theories and creativity would be the equalizer to mechanical skill. However, this prevents lower teams and ordinary players from catching up, as there’s a barrier that they may not have the resources to overcome. This polarizing change may not have much effect now as the meta is still fairly set in place, but the slower and less transparent transfer of information will see many players left behind.

After the second open beta late last month, the fighting game community has been hungry for more Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves. Now, SNK has revealed the fighter usage just a week ahead of the game’s launch, and there are clear favourites.

City of the Wolves is the next fighting game in the Fatal Fury series after over 26 years of waiting. The roster features a blend of iconic characters and newcomers, and nine of them were available to try out during the second open beta.

Like many fighting games in recent years, Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves will feature two different control options: Arcade for the classic fighting game players and Smart Style for modern, simplified controls that help new players ease into the game. SNK broke down the fighter usage by the two control modes.

A look at the combined Arcade and Smart Style control players had Tizoc at the top. His pro wrestling style and persona has been a bit hit with players, who likely wanted to check out his new moves in the beta. The 15.4% usage rate is also probably due to him being the only new fighter available on the second beta’s roster.

The second-most-played character was Terry Bogard with 14.4%, arguably the most recognisable Fatal Fury fighter ever. He was followed by Rock at 14.3%.

The fourth most-played fighter for combined control was Preecha, a new character that was playable in the first open beta. Her colourful personality and unique fighting style has won over the FGC.

When it came to characters that got no love during the second open beta, Kain and B. Jenet found themselves at the bottom with 7.4% and 6.5%, respectively.

There are a few changes when you switch between just Arcade Style and Smart Style character picks. For Arcade Style, Tizoc was still on top, but Terry and Rock were tied. For players trying out Smart Style, Terry was the top pick, likely due to his more straightforward moveset and recognisable playstyle.

When Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves releases, there will be 17 fighters on the roster, including newcomers like Cristiano Ronaldo. This will most definitely shake up the character usage, especially when it comes to competitive players.

Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves will be released on April 24th, 2025. Its first major competitive appearance will be at Evo 2025 in August. This will determine the meta going forward, especially for Arcade Style users.

However, there was recently a showcase at Evo Japan 2025, which featured top fighting game players having a casual tournament. The entire roster was available and the pros played almost every character. Terry and Salvatore showed up the most as the tournament reached its end, but it’s still too early to know if these characters will be competitively viable when real stakes are on the line.

Gaming publisher 2K announced plans to launch a new tournament service with The Play Company (TPC) for NBA 2K.

The service, called Play NBA 2K, will be integrated into TPC’s flagship product, Play OS, giving US users the chance to compete in weekly and celebrity-hosted tournaments for cash prizes.

Speaking about the partnership, Brandon Pitts, TPC CEO, said: “Unlocking the ability for NBA 2K players to earn real cash prizes through competitive play marks a major milestone for us and the industry. We’re incredibly grateful to the team at 2K for helping make this transformative partnership a reality.”

Starting April 17th, 2025, the service will offer both free and entry-fee-based tournaments. Those that are free will be available for users aged 13 and older in the US, save for Arizona, and paid tournaments will be open to users 18 and older in permitted US states. Official rules are also available online.

2K’s deal with TPC makes Play OS an official platform for NBA 2K tournaments. The specifics say that TPC will handle running and coordinating both weekly tournaments and marquee events on Play NBA 2K. On the other hand, 2K will provide game promotion, social support, and a menu button in the Play Now section teaching players on how to enter.

“2K’s partnership with The Play Company will further expand the ways that we are trying to build engagement and connect with our players,” said Ronnie “Ronnie 2K” Singh, Head of Lifestyle and Content Marketing at 2K. “For us the deal with The Play Company serves as yet another way to quench the thirst of our competitive 2K community.”

The service is officially live online and ready to download, launching alongside Play Now and MyTEAM tournaments, with additional events expected to roll out in the coming months.

TPC, formerly known as One Up, has worked with the NBA 2K franchise in the past. In addition, the company has an app that allows players to organise their own tournaments or challenges with friends across popular game titles such as Call of Duty, Madden NFL, Fortnite and more.

A special Senate committee has been tasked with overseeing a controversial casino bill in Thailand.

It is set to hold its first meeting on April 23, in what will become a six-month review of the government’s divisive Entertainment Complex Bill.

Initially proposed by Senator Sorachat Wichaya Suwanphrom, the move also reflects the public mood following the recent protests held outside Thailand’s parliament building in Bangkok.

The new committee is set to be formed by 35 Senate members, however, that number currently sits at 34 following the recent resignation of Senator Premsak Piayura.

Expected to take 180 days, the study will also incorporate the opinions of 12 additional external experts. However, concerns over possible political interference have already clouded the process.

Media reports suggest lobbying is already underway to appoint a chairperson with political ties from Buri Ram – a city municipality.

These rumors have raised alarm bells largely because the Bhumjaithai Party has a stronghold in the region as well as a perceived influence over some of the Senate’s 200 members.

As a result, observers fear that the review could be used as a political tool amid the simmering tension between the ruling Pheu Thai Party and Bhumjaithai. While both parties are intertwined in the current government coalition, further cracks have begun to emerge over their differing views on the Pheu Thai-led casino initiative.

Members from Pheu Thai, including Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra, have publicly emphasized that the bill is not just about legalizing gambling, with Secretary-General Sorawong Thienthong stating: “This is a special [project] to draw investors and generate revenue.”

Pheu Thai MP Anusorn Iamsa-ard also echoed this sentiment, warning critics and media outlets not to “distort information about the entertainment complex project.”

He followed up by insisting that the initiative aims to boost economic development while also dismissing fears that it will become a money-laundering hub for criminals.

During the upcoming House recess, Pheu Thai MPs are also planning to meet with their constituents to explain the project’s true objectives and benefits. In doing so, Anusorn expressed confidence that with a better understanding of the project, the public would begin to help drive it forward.

Meanwhile, Thai legal experts indicate that the bill’s first reading might not happen until July at the earliest, with licensing or bidding for the project possibly taking until 2027. Despite the slow timeline, all eyes will now be focused on who the Senate appoints as its panel chairperson and the conclusions it draws after its three-month review.

KRAFTON India has raised the prize pool for its upcoming Battlegrounds Mobile India Series (BGIS) 2025, which will feature a record-breaking ₹3.2 crore (~£288,000) prize pool.

This 60% increase compared to the previous year’s prize pool is due to the popular reception of KRAFTON’s BGIS 2025 Crate introduced earlier this year, leaving India’s esports landscape ‘thriving’.

This news follows KRAFTON’s showcasing the top 16 teams at BGIS 2025, which are set to compete across a three-day grand finale at the Biswa Bangla Mela Prangan from April 25th–27th. All teams will be competing for the lion’s share of the prize pool, which is ₹1.2 crore (~$140,000/£107,000) higher compared to last year. Due to the increase, the prize pool will now be split across all 32 teams instead of just the top half.

These are all the qualified teams competing in the BGIS 2025 Grand Finals:

Karan Pathak, Associate Director of Esports at KRAFTON India, commented on the occasion:, “BGIS 2025 isn’t just a tournament, it’s a celebration of how far Indian Esports has come. The 60% prize pool boost, including ₹1.2 crore allocated to the top 32 teams, is our way of giving back to the competitive community and encouraging more players to push their limits. 

“From record-breaking participation to incredible viewership, it’s clear that India’s Esports landscape is thriving, and we’re excited to see the energy build as we head into the Grand Finals.”

Battlegrounds Mobile India, formerly known as PUBG Mobile India, remains one of the most popular esports titles globally, with over 200m registered users.

According to AnimeSpotlight, from March 19th to April 11th, 2025, KRAFTON India released the BGIS Special Edition 2025 crate, an in-game item with exclusive BGIS-themed gear. This included collectables, gun skins, cosmetics and more. Proceeds from the event went directly to BGIS 2025’s prize pool.