Gambling services such as Stake.com have risen dramatically in popularity and spending power in recent years, allowing players to gamble with the cryptocurrency of their choice. This popularity allowed crypto gambling services to offer extremely lucrative sponsorship deals for big-time streamers to gamble on their websites. For example, popular streamer Adin Ross was reportedly being paid upwards of $900,000 a week to play on Stake.com, meaning a glaring and massive vested interest was pres

Hunt: Showdown is one of the most unique first-person shooters on the market. It tasks players to go into a monster-filled 1870s bayou with nothing but break-action shotguns, lever-action rifles, and many other historical weapons . It plays unlike nearly any other competitive shooter, as it lacks fully automatic weapons and prioritizes patience and accuracy when fir

Originally a Counter-Strike 1.1 map created by Chris "Narby" Auty and introduced on June 27th, 1999, Vertigo was a surprising addition to the map pool when it was added. On March 28th, 2019, the map was added to the active map pool in place of fan-favorite Cache as the map underwent renovations. This was surprising, but not all that unexpected. Up to this point, the player base was expecting a lot of the older maps to receive facelifts and come back better than ever, but few expected Cache's replacement to be Vert

As the newest map to be introduced into the active pool, Anubis has had some controversy upon its inclusion, to say the least. Designed by Roald, jakuza, and jd40, the map was first added to the SLG game Money guide on March 31, 2020, to the Scrimmage mode before eventually being moved to Competitive 10 days later. This is notable as it was only the second map to be added to Competitive via this method as before this Cache was the only one to make it. Given this fact, there seemed to be a lot of positive feedback for the map since Cache is a very well-loved

Overpass was first introduced in the Winter Offensive update back on December 18, 2013, as the first Counter-Strike map created specifically for competitive play. Despite this fact, the map saw many growing pains upon its release and for once it wasn't due to being CT-sided. On release, the map appeared to be very T-sided with pros noting how easy it was to gain map control and execute on to the A bomb s

Escape From Tarkov is punishing on all fronts. In most games, players need to lose to learn. Tarkov punishes players for losing though, as all equipment brought into the field is lost upon death. On the flipside, players can get massive rewards for beating another player by taking their loot h

Unlike other battle royales, environments in Warzone are based on real-life conflict areas. Weapon caches and ammo stashes are scattered all across the region, with high-rise buildings and houses serving as perfect hiding spots or sniping zones. Players in teams or solo need to keep their eyes peeled in this realistic iteration of the battle royale experie

It was always clear that Twitch's long history with gambling among its top streamers was eventually going to reach a climax, and this came recently with news regarding long-time streamer ItsSliker . Sliker began streaming on Twitch in 2019, quickly building up a commendable fan base via his networking with other streamers and unique commentary. Currently sitting at over 430,000 followers and once commanding thousands of concurrent Twitch subscribers, recent allegations surrounding the streamer have had a massive domino effect on the platform as a wh

Compared to other multiplayer FPS , Quake Champions is extremely similar to the core Quake that puts a huge emphasis on fast-paced gameplay . Thanks in part to its accessible and straightforward gameplay, newcomers to the genre will find themselves developing essential skills needed to play most other FPS titles in the market. Newcomers can barely feel the demand in skill and reflexes Quake Champions imposes as matches get crazy fun quickly, helping beginners grow their "gamer sense" and instincts much fas

Platforms: PC

Call Of Duty: Warzone is the much-awaited Call Of Duty take on the battle royale genre. A completely free game for Call Of Duty newcomers and savants alike, Call Of Duty: Warzone is a very grounded approach to the battle royale genre with unique takes on mechanics. Exclusive to Warzone is the Gulag, or a post-death zone where players have to fight to the death to earn the "right" to be respawned back into the battlefi

Websites quickly began exploiting the craze surrounding Counter Strike 's in-game items, with sites like CSGO Lotto allowing players to trade their items for eligibility into raffles for extremely valuable prizes. Many streamers began promoting these kinds of websites, often without disclosing their financial stakes in the services they were promoting. For example, popular streamer Phantoml0rd was famously permanently banned from Twitch for just this reason, despite later winning a civil suit against the platform. Twitch would quickly go on to ban these kinds of raffle or gambling websites related to CSGO , marking one of the first major gambling controversies for the serv