CSGO10: Overcoming unprecedented challenges (2020)
A global pandemic that changed the way we live, a cheating scandal that affected the highest tiers of competition, and a power struggle that reshaped the tournament circuit all defined 2020, one of Counter-Strike's most difficult years.
"I think it [2020] is going to be a weird year in some ways." The words spoken by four-time Major winner Peter "dupreeh" Rasmussen at the final event of 2019 went on to ring much more true than he could've ever imagined.
The Dane was referring to the anticipated changes in the tournament landscape as BLAST, ESL, and what would later be known as Flashpoint were set to usher in an era of partner events fighting over which teams would join their projects. The tournament organizer power struggle was indeed one of the three main stories of 2020, although perhaps the smallest one in the eyes of Counter-Strike fans.
Come January, there was little indication of what was waiting down the road for the Counter-Strike community. The standard off-season shuffle took place; Ilya "Perfecto" Zalutskiy joined Natus Vincere and BIG picked up Nils "k1to" Gruhne and Florian "syrsoN" Rische as the most impactful changes during the "transfer window" — both squads would end up securing titles as the year progressed. It started to become apparent that we were entering an unprecedented time at the end of February, when it was announced that the iconic Spodek Arena would be left empty for the IEM Katowice playoffs.
The reason? COVID-19.
Growing in the pandemic
The decision made by the Polish officials was met with a polarized response. A part of the Counter-Strike fanbase supported the decision to proceed with caution about the coronavirus, which was at the time a mystery to the general population, but a large contingent was shocked that the event would be played without a crowd because of what they considered "just a flu." After all, just days before the playoffs were set to take place in Katowice, tens of thousands of fans were attending Champions League football games and there were no confirmed cases in Poland yet. So why couldn't we just watch some Counter-Strike?
It soon became apparent that the decision to not allow fans into the venue to witness Natus Vincere's title run was the correct one, as the world locked down and ground to a halt.
Not long after, the IEM Rio Major slated for May was postponed for November (before being postponed again, eventually until 2022), the initial Flashpoint season had one day of LAN play before being moved online, and big arena tournaments such as ESL One Cologne were broken into regions and played remotely as well. Just a few weeks after people were surprised about not being able to sit in an arena with thousands of others, the reality of a new normal was accepted across the globe. Leaving your house was to be done only when there was a real need, traveling was out of the question, and leisure activities with live audiences such as sports and concerts were put on hold.
As the majority of the global population was stuck indoors with a dire need for entertainment at a time in which all live entertainment was brought to a halt, Counter-Strike had a unique opportunity. Online competition had been looked down upon since the game's competitive scene took off, but the fact that the world's best teams could still face off against each other while playing from their own homes meant that the game could power on. LAN play and the roaring crowds that amplify spectacular moments were missed, but with traditional sports on pause, interest in the game only grew during 2020 in both players and viewers.
Shocking results, the rise of new talent, and some of the greats falling off were a part of the shakeup that came with CS:GO's switch from LAN to an online setting. The likes of BIG, Complexity, and HEROIC secured their first trophies, Olof "olofmeister" Kajbjer took a break, and Adil "ScreaM" Benrlitom and Nick "nitr0" Cannella made the switch to Riot Games' VALORANT, the rival first-person shooter that was released during the pandemic and provided another challenge for the health of the Counter-Strike scene.
Initially, new teams rising to the top provided a breath of fresh air, and the seemingly endless stream of tournaments gave viewers something to do while forced to stay indoors. Slowly but surely, however, the lower production quality of online tournaments, established teams that dominated in previous years struggling in a new setting, and the constant postponement of the return to LAN grew into frustration.
Frustration wasn't just an issue for viewers, but for the players, too. Unlike in previous years, when traveling across the world was a driving factor in fatigue for the competitors, in 2020 it was the back-to-back-to-back slog of events that pushed them to the limit. The discussion about burnout came to the forefront like never before, with multiple members of Astralis taking breaks from competition.
A solution teams found? Extended rosters. They were pioneered by Astralis, who had nine different players compete for them in the year; improved by Vitality, who swapped players depending on the map; and utilized by Natus Vincere in perhaps the most beneficial way, as their sixth man, Valeriy "b1t" Vakhovskiy, ended up becoming a top 10 player the following year.
Those three teams were the most successful ones of the year, too, with BIG and G2 joining the list as the five best of 2020. The selection of the best player was as tight as it ever was, with Mathieu "ZywOo" Herbaut edging out Oleksandr "s1mple" Kostyliev in a decision that was widely debated among the community.
But aside from the fights for No.1 and Nikola "NiKo" Kovač's move to G2, there was little that happened in the competitive scene that will be remembered by the average viewer, especially as most of the events were overshadowed by a scandal of a scale never before seen in Counter-Strike.
Coach bug rocks the scene
"Weird coach BUG which allows you to cheat."
A TwitLonger by Polish coach and former CS 1.6 player Mariusz "Loord" Cybulski brought to attention a worrying exploit at the end of August, but the scope of it was not understood until a few days later when news about Nicolai "HUNDEN" Petersen, Aleksandr "zoneR" Bogatiryev, and Ricardo "dead" Sinigaglia being banned for the coaching bug exploit broke and videos of coaches stuck in the air and gaining information they should not be able to gain, shook the scene to its core. Unfortunately, that would only be the start of a saga that has not yet reached its conclusion, even two years later.
The investigation into the coaching bug abuse was led by freelance admin Michal Slowinski and software developer Steve Dudenhoeffer, who were alerted about the bug a month before it became public knowledge and started working on a way to find wrongdoers, volunteering up to 12 hours a day to the project. They ended up providing the esports watchdog ESIC with information about bug usage by parsing through tens of thousands of demos, dating back to 2016 when it is rumored to have first appeared, and manually checking suspicious parts.
By the end of September 37 coaches were banned by ESIC for using the bug, including some high-profile names such as Sergey "starix" Ischuk, Faruk "pita" Pita, and Allan "Rejin" Petersen. Bans ranged from four months to three years depending on the number of matches and rounds a coach was found in a bugged position.
The whole scandal was widely discussed in the public, with one of the key issues for fans and competitors being the fact that no players were punished in the process. Early on, ESIC claimed that there was "insufficient evidence available to determine with any certainty" that the players that competed under the three initially banned coaches HUNDEN, zoneR, and dead were complicit to the bug abuse. The same stance was held for all of the players that competed under coaches that were banned later on, as well.
Another point of criticism was directed at the bans of coaches such as Nicholas "guerri" Nogueira, who claimed he was alt-tabbed for the majority of the match in question and provided TeamSpeak recordings to back his claim, and Robert "RobbaN" Dahlström, who said he didn't communicate while stuck in the bug during a 16-1 defeat. ESIC held the stance that even just staying in the bugged position was deemed a breach of their code of conduct and enough to receive a punishment.
It seemed like the investigation was more or less finished after the big batch of bans, but more of them, for different types of coaching bugs, were handed out as late as 2022. And more infractions are yet to be publicized. The stream-sniping scandal, which came to the forefront in December and was pushed under the rug, and the never ending North American match fixing investigation, were additional stains on the difficult, drama-filled year for CS:GO.
ESL, BLAST, Flashpoint start partnership era
Big changes to the competitive landscape were already on the horizon since the end of 2019. Talk about tournament organizers' sustainability, an over-saturated schedule, a lack of stability, and revenue sharing for organizations got louder. The big TOs were set on changing how they — and by extension the whole scene —, operate.
One of the potential changes was reported on in September 2019, when documents mentioning "strict exclusivity rules" for ESL Pro League teams were leaked. That got a quick response from Valve, who took a stance against restricting teams from attending events hosted by a rival company. ESL later claimed that they had no interest in restricting access to its flagship league, but despite no rules being implemented about attending both ESL Pro League and the soon to be announced Flashpoint, organizations were forced to pick their sides due to overlapping event dates, setting up what was described as "soft exclusivity."
BLAST was the first tournament organizer to come out with their list of partnered teams and a revamped format for 2020, signing 12 organizations including most of the world's best. Astralis, G2, FaZe, Natus Vincere and Liquidwere among those confirmed as BLAST partners, and somehow, the Danish TO managed to stay out of the battle that followed between ESL and Flashpoint.
The tug of war for the best teams kicked off before 2020 even started. A report from DBLTAP in December 2019 claimed that Astralis, the world's best team at the time, declined to participate in the upcoming season of ESL Pro League and would participate in Flashpoint, at the time known as "B-Site." The team's in-game leader denied that a decision was made and the fight for the Danish organization turned out to be the crucial one, as others were looking at what the best team in the world was going to do before deciding who to side with.
The matter truly went public in 2020, though, with figures from parties giving interviews and appearing on podcasts to explain why their project was the better one, and fiery debates taking place in Counter-Strike's town square, Twitter. An article published in Rivalry chronicled the month-long, spat-filled saga during which both sides tried to win over the public, as well as organizations and players.
The way ESL restructured Pro League, cutting it down from 48 to 24 teams caused significant backlash and led to the TO apologizing to snubbed teams for a lack of communication about their plans. ESL and Flashpoint were also trying to outdo each other in terms of promised revenue shares for players and teams, while the latter implemented a $100,000 penalty rule for partner teams that weren't competitive enough (it was never enforced due to the effects of the coronavirus).
Ultimately, both TOs kicked off their leagues under difficult circumstances as the coronavirus pandemic forced them to change plans and shift things online, making it impossible to know how the saga would've played out had it been a normal year like any other.
But as things did happen, Flashpoint won an early battle with an announcement of its broadcast talent, scooping up the cream of the crop. ESL replied by securing the best organizations for their project — thirteen of the best teams signed ESL's Louvre agreement, with only one of them not ranked in the top-15 at the time.
Flashpoint's best teams were MIBR and Cloud9, organizations that were pushing for the project to get off the ground in the first place but with squads that were not at the top of the game. Following two partner seasons of Flashpoint in 2020 and an RMR event in 2021, MIBR and Cloud9 remain the only two Flashpoint partners still fielding a roster in CS:GO, although no news from the project have since come out and it appears to be all but dead.
Regardless of the winners or losers of the 2020 TO tussle, Counter-Strike's landscape was changed irreversibly with the introduction of team-tournament partnerships, and while most events still offer a way for non-partnered teams to qualify and make a name for themselves, as Heroic and Gambit did in 2021, it is becoming increasingly difficult to break out and stay on top without a spot in BLAST or ESL's tournaments — preferably both.
Nearly everything went wrong when looking back at 2020. It was a long, dark, dramatic year for Counter-Strike and for the world at large. But it was also one of grit and determination in which the game and its community not only overcame unprecedented challenges, but in those unforeseen circumstances, even managed to reach new heights.
The CSGO10 Series:
Ismailcan 'XANTARES' Dörtkardeş
Nikola 'NiKo' Kovač
Kenny 'kennyS' Schrub
Nemanja 'nexa' Isaković
Ignacio 'meyern' Meyer
Adil 'ScreaM' Benrlitom
Aleksandr 'zoneR' Bogatiryev
Mariusz 'Loord' Cybulski
Keith 'NAF' Markovic
Olof 'olofmeister' Kajbjer
Abay 'HObbit' Khassenov
Nicolai 'HUNDEN' Petersen
Håvard 'rain' Nygaard
Helvijs 'broky' Saukants
Valentin 'poizon' Vasilev
Johnny 'JT' Theodosiou
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