Pull out the textbooks because we’re seeing esport history for Valve‘s ever-popular Counter-Strike: Global Offensive as, for the first time ever, the Major has been outright canceled due to the pandemic.
They aren’t even looking at transferring to an online stage; perhaps due to the myriad of issues and complaints from both players and fans regarding the general ranking and skill upheaval noticeable as players contend with ping issues and the generally fickle nature of playing online in comparison to offline LANs.
The news is frustrating for many that have continued to watch the professional scene of CS:GO fall apart in recent months with accusations of cheating, coaches keeping streams open to gain economy information from opponents, spectating bugs that coaches have exploited, matches being thrown for profit as everyone wanted to shift over to Valorant as the CS:GO scene is simply brutally stacked with skill and talent, and Valve failing to push out a competent anti-cheat that has turned the matchmaking experience into the worst it has ever been in history.
It’s a mouthful when you write it all out, but Counter-Strike arguably isn’t looking as healthy as it has been in recent years (decades, even) and there doesn’t appear to be an end in sight.
This is just another minute event that is dotting the burning landscape of 2020 for one of the most legendary esports to ever exist.
💔 #ESLOne Rio 2020 @CSGO Major is canceled
💪 Plan to return to LAN with @IEM Global Challenge
📅 The full event calendar for the rest of 2020Read it here first:https://t.co/k4xhjN84Yy
— ESL Counter-Strike (@ESLCS) September 9, 2020
ESL did go so far as to state that they are planning on still bringing a CS:GO Major to Brazil, a statement that surprised a few considering the high number of death threats that multiple rosters have received from Brazilian fans, threatening death if any of the players went to Brazil for the Major; an event that seems to have been entirely ignored by Valve and ESL together.
@mibr also not 😂😂😂
— Wannes “wantje” Vandevelde 🇧🇪 (@wannesvdv99) September 9, 2020
It’s most assuredly fine: if a player ends up murdered in retaliation for beating a team in a video game, the officials will likely shrug and state that they didn’t understand any of this was a problem. What a risk to take.
While some have been requesting for the Major to be shifted online, it’s frankly difficult to do: the consistent disconnects have plagued almost every player this year, and resulting in a sizeable heaping of frustration from them. It’s also shaken up team rankings as it’s simply a wildly different beast to play online with latency compared to an offline LAN.
The good news of all of this is the bizarre Major qualifiers which gave Gaules and his friends’ absolute say in what is and is not cheating and the ability to ban players from Majors with impunity, is now less of a concern. At the moment.
Here’s hoping the break gives Valve time to fix literally any aspect of Counter-Strike in the interim.