Adam Snavely Profile - Dot Esports

That didn’t take long. A day after an update that functionally nerfed tap strafing, one of the most popular advanced movement techniques in Apex Legends, Respawn walked the change back, citing “community feedback.”

That feedback was more like an uproar from several high-profile pros, streamers, and many other players who enjoy Apex‘s slippery movement mechanic. Tap strafing, which began its life as a movement bug and quickly became a fundamental mechanic in the game similar to mouse and keyboard players’ ability to move while looting death boxes, allows players to instantly change directions in mid-air, maintaining their momentum. Respawn originally said the change was a “buffer” added to the mechanic in order to “combat automated movement tech,” but the change just ended up making many tap strafes feel sluggish and not nearly as effective.

Overwatch 2‘s dalliance with 6v6 isn’t going away any time soon. As announced by game director Aaron Keller, the current 6v6 playtest will be extended to the middle of the season.

Keller’s announcement on Twitter/X was met with plenty of praise from Overwatch fans who are happy to see the game get back to its roots, and it’s pretty easy to see why. A return to 6v6 was an overwhelmingly popular cry to developers over the past year or two, with players tired of the 5v5 format the game switched to when the sequel was announced. “We’re extending the 6v6 playtest due to continued player interest and excitement for the mode,” Keller said in his post. He went on to say that the current test, which features the old 2-2-2 role queue version of 6v6, will give way to an even more classic format at midseason: 6v6 open queue.

If you’ve played Apex Legends, you know there’s only two big rules to this game: Don’t follow your Octane teammate jump-padding into a fight with four other teams already there, and cool skins are everything. And 2024 had some great skins.

From the thematic to the stylish to the downright bizarre, a skin you like is one way of leaving your signature on a kill for all others to see, whether on the battlefield itself or on your player banner. Here are the best skins in Apex from 2024.

Forget Christmas wish lists—the end of the year is perfect for drafting up your game-release calendars in hot anticipation for what’s to come the following year. While 2024 had a few releases that left an impression, 2025 is chock-full of games that have landed on many gamers’ radars.

From RPGs to roguelike deck-builders and everything in between, the staff at Dot Esports has a vast array of games we’re looking forward to in the next year. Here are 10 games we’re excited about—and why you should be, too.

Season 23 of Apex Legends, From the Rift, has treated players to maps both new and old, and the map rotation continues to throw new curveballs.

From the Rift took things back to where it all began in Apex with a day-one Kings Canyon when the season launched. Now in the second split of the season, things look a little bit more recent on the map front—although there is another classic LTM to enjoy thanks to the holiday-themed Winter’s Haunt event.

Christmas is still a week away, but Respawn Entertainment is already giving out presents to the Apex Legends community by addressing one of its biggest gripes with the game: matchmaking.

In a blog post today, the Apex team detailed changes made to matchmaking in 2024, including recent updates to how matchmaking works in high player-count windows as opposed to lower windows, as well as individual tweaks to specific game modes.

It’s almost time for the winter holidays, and that means it’s time for another winter event in Apex Legends, complete with skins for legends, weapons, and even a new Heirloom for Winter’s Haunt.

Winter’s Haunt is the latest edition of the traditional winter and Christmas event in Apex, and this year it brings with it an LTM that took a break in 2023: Winter Express, back once again to chug along the tracks on World’s Edge. If you’ve somehow missed this one before, you and your team have to board the train and hold it, respawning when you die, but gaining points the longer you can hold onto the train without enemies taking it. And before you ask: Yes, there’s going to be a ton of Ramparts, Caustics, Wattsons, and Newcastles playing this thing.

By now, you probably know The Witcher 4 is coming and it will feature Ciri as a protagonist, and a true witcher to boot. But there’s a lot of people that don’t think that’s possible, and now I feel like I’m the one going through the Trial of the Grasses.

I was sitting in the crowd at The Game Awards when I realized Ciri was going to be the protagonist in The Witcher 4, and the energy for the reveal was tremendous. And why wouldn’t it be? Ciri is a beloved character, one of the focal points of the masterpiece that is The Witcher 3 and the culmination of its story. Spoiler alert for those of you who still haven’t played it, but one of the best endings you can actually get in the game (and some say the best ending, full stop) is Ciri rescuing the world from an unstoppable force and then slipping away from her imperial responsibilities to become a witcher. The Witcher 4 trailer made good on that ending, showing off an older, hardened Ciri who has picked up a few new tricks of the witcher trade. These include potions that are dangerous for normal humans, as well as cat-like eyes that indicate she’s gone through the witcher mutations which make those potions marginally safer to consume, known as the Trial of the Grasses in the games and Andrzej Sapkowski’s stories.

Payments from the FTC are finally coming for Fortnite players after a settlement the American government agency reached with Epic Games almost two years ago.

The FTC and Epic reached the settlement to the tune of a couple hundred million dollars after allegations claimed the company “used design tactics known as dark patterns to trick players into making unwanted purchases, let children rack up unauthorized charges without any parental involvement, and blocked some users who disputed unauthorized charges from accessing their purchased content,” according to the FTC. The agency announced yesterday it was sending out the first round of payments from this settlement, which amounted to roughly 630,000 payments. The FTC says “about half” of these payments will be distributed via PayPal, while the other half will be physical checks.

With news breaking of a suspect taken into custody for the Dec. 4 shooting of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson, many were quick to look into the suspect’s background. And it looks like he might be a bit of a gamer.

The alleged shooter—Luigi Mangione, who New York police officials say was apprehended on Dec. 9—seemed to have a LinkedIn page detailing his education and school history, as reported by outlets like the BBC. And that LinkedIn page contains an entry for an internship at Firaxis Games, the game development company founded by Sid Meier that’s made all of the Civilization games since Civ 3. Specifically, the LinkedIn page entry claims Mangione worked on Civ 6 during his internship as a UI Programming Intern, and says he “fixed over 300 UI bugs (25 percent of UI bug count).”