[CS:GO] Underfunded - Counter-Strike’s Prizing Problems

Valve recently released word that DotA 2, their most-played game and one of the most-watched eSports in the world, would receive an $18,000,000 prize pool for its fifth world championship, held August 3rd-8th, 2015. The International Main Event, or simply “TI5” to many fans, is gaining a lot of attention from the eSports community, fans and professionals alike, due to the huge scale of both its competitive scene and the groundbreakingly large prize for the teams invited. While this is a huge step forward for eSports, many players and fans of Counter-Strike: Global Offensive’s professional scene feel overlooked and ignored by the gaming giant responsible for CS:GO, DotA 2, Team Fortress 2, the Steam client, and many other facets of the gaming industry.

While DotA 2 bears a top-2 spot in PC eSports, competing with fellow MOBA League of Legends for the top position, its little brother seems to be ignored by Valve’s checking account. Despite being Valve’s second most-played game, CS:GO championships and major tournaments receive a small fraction of the prize money compared to those for DotA 2. Both games are enormous revenue-earners on Steam with their tradable and sellable item systems and occupy spots in the top 5 most-watched games, so why does this discrepancy exist? 

Many have brought up the fact that CS:GO has many different pro leagues and major tournaments such as ESL ESEA, MLG CEVO, Faceit, ESWC, and Dreamhack. This is undeniably a factor, as it splits up competitions, rankings, and records into a confusing mess when compared with games which have one official, primary, or developer-sponsored pro league. Even after recognizing the results of this fact, though, questions can still be raised toward Valve as to why this was allowed to become such an ingrained system and why the company didn’t create one primary league. 

This isn’t necessarily to say that Counter-Strike has been ignored by its developers; many changes, updates, fixes, and new sets of content have been introduced regularly into the game since its release in 2012. Perhaps the perception some hold that Valve ignores CS:GO its fans is driven more by the high community involvement of rival game dev companies such as Hi-Rez, Blizzard, and Riot. 

Regardless of speculations and assumptions about the situation, the fact remains that prizing is sorely lacking in comparison to competing eSports. In terms of sustainability, a scene and fan base of CS:GO’s size would simply be much healthier and if bolstered by some changes in organization, infrastructure, and monetary investment.


Written by
Jeff "goliath" Light
goliathxgaming.blogspot.com
twitch.tv/goliathxgaming
@goliath_Jeff

[CS:GO] Tournament Formatting and its Effect on the ESL ESEA Finals

Over the weekend of July 2^nd through July 5^th, ESL and ESEA hosted their much-awaited Counter-Strike: Global Offensive pro league finals in Cologne, Germany. The event showcased eight teams, split evenly into groups between European and North American regional divisions. Each division featured the four teams with the best regular season records in their region during the ESL ESEA Pro League’s first season.

Despite huge anticipation from fans of eSports and Counter-Strike, many questions and uncertainties still existed regarding the event’s formatting and process of deciding the tournament schedule. The first part of the tournament was a group stage, with teams placed in ‘A’ and ‘B’ groups to determine seeding and placement for the “playoff” stage and ultimately, the Grand Finals. In the group stage, teams played one another in best-of-one series, which created the issues mentioned by fans and analysts alike.

In professional CS:GO, many teams are known for being particularly talented and experienced with certain maps, often varying based on team and individual play-styles. In a best-of-one scenario, this can cause problems if a bias is theoretically created based on map selections favoring certain teams. Many fans commented on Reddit, Twitter, and other forms of social media that best-of-three or best-of-five match formats provide more balanced playing conditions and reward teams who play consistently on a variety of maps and lessens the likelihood of upsets. Though these criticisms were fairly widespread, many people noted that the tournament’s group stage also featured a double elimination aspect to lessen the potential for unfair upsets. These retorts were exemplified by the fact that number one EU seed Fnatic, seen by many as one of the best teams in the world, lost their first match to CLG, a North American bottom seed.

Despite some criticisms of format, any fan of eSports who had the chance to watch the ESL ESEA Finals would agree that the event was undeniably exciting to watch, as Fnatic won a nail-biting Grand Finals match over the North American Cloud9. Congratulations to all teams involved for their success during this season and to Fnatic for bringing home the championship.

Written by 
Jeff "goliath" Light
goliathxgaming.blogspot.com
Twitter: @goliath_jeff
twitch.tv/goliathxgaming