Riley "DNZio" Haghian is a member of Tribe and the top-ranked Vainglory player in North America. He is 14.
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The DeanBeat: Vainglory and mobile esports grow up with 5v5 MOBA action

  • Posted byby Dean Takahashi
  • Updated
  • 4 min

Riley “DNZio” Haghian hopes to make a living playing Vainglory. He brought home more than $20,000 in a recent world championship tournament, and he is ranked No. 1 in North America. And he is only 14.

Haghian’s budding career in mobile esports is the tip of the spear for the hopes around Vainglory, a multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) game for mobile devices. I met Haghian at Super Evil Megacorp‘s crowded Vainglory preview event last night in San Francisco, where a crowd was cheering through much of the evening as some of the best players squared off in the game’s new mode, five-versus-five multiplayer. The Vainglory 5v5 update debuts for free in the free-to-play game on February 13.

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Written by

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.