osu!weekly #9

Hello everyone, Tasha here and we've got an exciting weekend of tournaments and other events going on, so lets get right into it!

The Catch the Beat World Cup group stage is starting this weekend! The first match will be on Saturday at 10am UTC, with the last match on Sunday at 6pm UTC. There will be a total of 48 matches over the weekend, though not all will be streamed. If you'd like to see the schedule for the matches, you can see them on the wiki page, located here. As a special bonus, the newly started osu!news youtube channel has created several videos showcasing the captains of each team, giving those who are unfamiliar with the mode a chance to get to see the players and get a basic summary of what they're good at. We hope you can tune in and enjoy cheering for some of the best CTB players that are partaking in some awesome fruit catching action!

As mentioned above, there is a new source of news that you'll be able to get the latest ongoings of osu from, now in video! The osu!news youtube channel is now live, and we'll be doing plenty of cool things that are a little harder to do in the weekly, such as skin showcases, post-tournament analysis, and much more (maybe even player of the week for each mode, who knows?)! For this week, we have a skin showcase presented by deadbeat of the Hanami skin, be sure to check it out!

The "Torneos Hispanohablantes" is an Ibero-american standard tournament for countries that speak Spanish and Portuguese. Last week, the teams were sorted into groups and the map pool presented. This weekend the group stage will be starting, being streamed live at their tournament's stream. If you'd like to discuss this tournament, there are threads in Spanish and Portuguese that can be viewed in their respective language forums.

A 1v1 standard tournament created by thewagner is now into its second round this weekend. The tournament is restricted to players ranked between 10k and 30k, so we can expect to see players from a wide skill range. If you're interested in watching players who aren't at a pro level participate in a fun tournament environment, be sure to tune in to one of their two streams to see all the action!

The osu! Community Tournament II, or OCT II, is a community run 1v1 standard tournament hosted by Ascendance for various player skill levels. This particular tournament is allowing players between ranks 10k to 50k to participate, and over the period of its registrations, had 256 registrants accepted. Registrations are now closed and the tournament will be starting on the 30th of May.

There has been a change in the ranking process that now allows players to dispute disqualifications made by the Quality Assurance Team. This change was made due to there not being a clear way to dispute issues that the QAT bring up that might not necessarily be against the ranking criteria. Now mappers can submit a form if there is a dispute, where a final decision is made regarding the map and whether it is ready to be ranked.

Earlier this week, we had a new video from the osu!academy, this episode interviewing one of the newer staff members of osu!, drum drum!

We have more sneak peaks from osu!next of the future of osu, this week with what looks like the new spinner design for osu!standard with a sleek, futuristic look. I don't know about you guys, but I'm getting more excited for the future of this game every week!

That's all there is for this week. Make sure to leave a comment down below letting us know which team(s) you'll be cheering for in the Catch the Beat World Cup this weekend! If you have any news you'd like to be included in the weekly, remember you can send an email to news@ppy.sh regarding your tournament, event, or story and we may include it in the weekly.

Have a good weekend everyone and see you next week!~

—Tasha