Overwatch has had bigger tournaments than TF2 for a while now. This isn't exactly new.

A quote from b4nny has been added to the article.

By my quick (and possibly inaccurate) count, 73 out of 113 matches (64.6%) in ESEA Season 15 EU TF2 Open were forfeited. It technically counts as the highest division of TF2 for ESEA EU, but... it was an open division after all.

After a few attempts to contact them, they gave community representatives the April 2015 meeting.

He does say Invite-level, and NA hasn't had a major LAN in 2016 (and won't unless something changes).

Upper bracket winner gets an advantage in the map pick process. It's a straight best-of-five otherwise.

There were no map picks for the groups - everything was predetermined.

No, the online servers are due to problems getting plugins working on LAN servers. We're still trying to get that fixed ASAP.

No live STVs will be publicly exposed.

We do aim to do articles for all roster transactions, but we didn't do as well as we should have last season. We will step up our efforts this upcoming season and cover everything that happens.

If you are involved with an Invite team and know of team news, please feel free to reach out to a staff writer and let us know.

The cooldown for joining teams? I thought it didn't apply during registration - I joined and paid fees for players on two Invite teams last season right before registration ended.

Obviously this wouldn't work during the season.

You could just get the team password, join the team, pay the fees, and then leave the team. Rinse and repeat.

You can buy premium on Steam, but not pay for league fees.

PugChamp will not be testing this package, though aspects of CompCtrl are used in PugChamp already.

Hey all,

Recently I've been working on the server setup for this year's Insomnia event, and I've reached the point where it's pretty much finished. However, since quite a bit of this functionality is new, I think it's best to release it early so that people can get used to the new features and so that any major bugs can be found and fixed before the event.

Without further ado, here's the release candidate for testing: https://slack-files.com/T02DV3Y84-F22REV1HU-9651ab819f

You'll need the latest version of SourceMod installed on your server. Before a game, exec one of the three configs (insomnia_koth, insomnia_standard_groups, insomnia_standard_elim) to activate the functionality.

Major things to note:

• Matches are managed via CompCtrl. This is particularly key if you use the elimination 5CP config, as a tie at the end of regulation will proceed to an overtime/golden cap round after readying up.
  
• When both teams ready up, there will be a 60-second countdown instead of the normal 5-second countdown. (For matches streamed at Insomnia58, production will have to manually start this countdown - you can try this by setting "compctrl_gamecountdowns_autorun 0" to require manual unpausing and "compctrl_gamecountdowns_paused 0/1" to resume/pause the countdown.)
  
• At the start of the match and/or overtime round you'll have live-on-1-restart, where the game will restart once before beginning.
  
• There will be a 15-second strategy period "freezetime" between rounds.
  
• Map timers will pause during humiliation and strategy periods.
  
• A player can coach (remaining permanently dead and having access to team POVs) by sending "/becomecoach" to chat.

Feel free to provide feedback here s appropriate, and I hope you're as excited as I am for next week!