It’s cold outside for T2 and T3 players, no matter what title you’re diving into with hopes of making it to that illustrious T1/pro scene.
While T1 gets sponsors from anyone trying to connect with a younger demographic (for tournaments and stream sponsors) the lower teams struggle to gain any part of the limelight; an interesting facet of the world of sports that has brought about triumphant victories against all odds.
It’s a delicious experience, however, when a streamer manages to find the right voice and community and they turn into something more after sweating in the wings.
Matthew ‘WARDELL’ Yu struggled to get picked up on T1 teams as he pinged around the T2/3 scene; an aspiring AWPer who had the ability to win outlandish duels he had no right walking away from. While WARDELL struggled to break 100 viewers during his CS:GO scene, his shift over to Valorant has been lucrative; he typically hits 10,000 viewers on Twitch now.
Chaos EC is experiencing a bit of the same, although in a different manner.
After Chaos slapped down MIBR in a match that would turn into the most bizarre (and toxic) post-match fallout since Vito ‘KNG’ Giuseppe attempted to murder someone after a match for asking if they were up late partying.
The match had multiple players and fans of MIBR posting accusations that Chaos was cheating; specifically, a sixteen-year-old sniper Nathan ‘Leaf’ Orf; entire YouTube channels have been stood up (and become profitable as gauged by SocialBlade metrics) just to prove that Nathan Orf cheats in Counter-Strike.
Now, it’s worth taking a moment to realize that every prodigy that comes up through Counter-Strike will inevitably get called-out for assumptions of using cheats: it happened to Gabriel ‘Fallen’ Toledo, ZywOo, and even S1mple.
Yet this was unique as MIBR took the clash online, and multiple Chaos EC players needed to go private after the match to just avoid the torrent of death threats. Based on clips that have been disproven multiple times.
Chaos actually ended up with more than a few close looks as to how they were playing and their tactics, along with analysis of the players themselves; in total, June’s fiasco resulted in the largest social uptick for ChaosEC on Twitter; likely persuaded by Chaos continuing to consistently run in stride with the bizarre attacks that have been levied at them.
yes pic.twitter.com/BHcbhintwa
— Chaos EC (@ChaosEC) July 31, 2020
Chaos replied to their player Vanity with a picture of MIBRs trophies; a common image that Chaos is berated with as an outlandish statement of ‘how dare you beat MIBR, look how good they used to be’.
If your social media is struggling and wants to get into the spotlight, you might actually want to ring up the team widely considered to be the ‘most toxic team in professional Counter-Strike‘ and knock them down a few more inches. It’s great publicity, all things considered.