Xfire launches open beta for its e-Sports platform with player-created League of Legends tournaments

Xfire is launching the open beta test for its e-Sports platform, which will enable any player to create tournaments with friends in games such as Riot Games’ League of Legends. This means that amateur gamers will be able to compete in tournaments as easily as the pros.

The Xfire tournament platform is layered on top of the League of Legends game, which was launched in 2009 and still draws tens of millions of players a day for multiplayer online battle arena matches. That will help spread the popular e-Sports competition spread to more gamers, said Mark Donovan, chief executive of Santa Monica, Calif.-based Xfire, in an interview with GamesBeat.

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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.