While much of the country was glued to the NCAA basketball tournament over the weekend, two engineers from StubHub and eBay Classifieds were playing in a tournament of a different kind.
On March 11th, George Gao and Nacer Garga represented eBay and took second place in the Street Fighter V tournament called Hackerfight, a fighting video game tournament created and hosted by Facebook that brings together fighting community members from Bay Area tech companies. George and Nacer partnered with a friend from NatureBox. The only team to finish ahead of team eBay was the team from CAPCOM, which actually created Street Fighter V.
“We love Street Fighter; the game defines the memories of every kid in our generation, and promotes diversity, because we are all equals in the game, and only judged by our combos and expertise with the characters that we play,” said George, StubHub software engineer. “As importantly, we appreciate that our managers at StubHub support activities like Hackerfight and encourage us to participate. These types of events connect us with the tech community at large and help promote the expertise of our tech teams at StubHub and eBay.”
Hackerfight, now in its fifth year, welcomed a record turnout of gamers, engineers and enthusiasts to the Facebook campus in Menlo Park, Calif., and streamed the tournament to hundreds of thousands more via Twitch. HFV’s Facebook page counted 90 teams, 75 companies, and more than 400 in-person attendees, in addition to the streamed broadcast. Participants selected from two other game options, in addition to Street Fighter V: either Ultra Street Fighter IV for Playstation 4, or Street Fighter 2 Turbo for Cabinet.
Nacer, a software engineer with eBay Classifieds, was recognized by the HFV organizers as a Notable Player before the event, and participates in a number of hackathons and other tech competitions throughout the year. In fact, at the November 2015 innovation day at eBay, Nacer placed second with his Message Center project.