Editorial: Will Stewie2K find redemption?

Is redemption possible for Stewie2K in the off-season following a darling run at IEM Dallas?

The statistician lives in a Hell of his own making. Obsessed with precision, he endlessly throws up parameters that become his conscious cage. Hounded by finality, he lives by the dusty achievements of the past and the VLOOKUPs of today. Chasing the absolute, he is confounded by the mysteries of faith, or rather, by the intangibles of life. Entropy is his enemy, ever seeking him and his models, throwing the floorboards out from under them, and leaving naught but ruins behind.

All of us, to some degree, try to insulate ourselves from the vicissitudes of life. We throw up worldviews, belief systems, and rankings, all in the hope that they signify value. But the universal ferment that bubbles beneath the surface dogs us further. Intangibles haunt us ever on.

And while cold, engineered precision has brought us the modern creature comforts that we all know today, the fires of competition do not play by the laws of "optimal" or "exact." Sometimes chaos rains from the sky, and it is this quantum uncertainty that drives the statistician into a frenzy.

This brings us to today’s column: Jake "⁠Stewie2K⁠" Yip’s miracle run with G2 at IEM Dallas. G2’s victory in Dallas with the Stewie2K flavor reinvigorated the scene, in particular injecting much-needed lifeblood into the giant consumer market that is North America. It surprised nearly everyone who observes and commentates on professional CS, and was truly Cinderella-like in how "GStew" overcame numerous higher-ranked teams to claw their way to a gold medal.

Just how was this feat accomplished with a stand-in — particularly one who hadn’t (mostly) played high-level CS in two years and stood on a playoffs stage in five? What made this stand-in such a draw in terms of eyeballs and storylines? What could this signify about Stewie2K’s future?

Mount Stew

On paper, the deciding factors for G2’s ridiculous tournament run are relatively clear. A monstrous performance from Ilya "⁠m0NESY⁠" Osipov wowed crowds and teammates alike. Nikola "⁠NiKo⁠" Kovač, now long in the tooth in terms of tilt, took on the IGL mantle and seemed completely at ease with it, and also threw up massive numbers in the fragging department. And finally, we saw vestiges of Nemanja "⁠huNter-⁠" Kovač’s form from late CS:GO, as the cousin made game-changing plays and had his fair share of large moments.

These are the players in the G2 core who have to be unlocked to make deep tournament runs. However, something throughout 2024 had seemed off; the entire team seemed rigid and afraid, and fell short of expectations for such a stacked fragging core. Outside of 3-4th place finishes at IEM Chengdu 2024 and the PGL Copenhagen Major, their results gravitated more in the 5th-8th place finishes range, far from both internal and external expectations.

Lo! Enter Stewie2K. Firstly, from the statistics perspective, both Stewie2K and Nemanja "⁠nexa⁠" Isaković had generally poor showings in Dallas. But something about the former completely reinvigorated G2 compared to earlier.

A vibe in the air gave G2 a super-charged, can-do energy. The kids, and Stewie2K himself, called it an “aura,” and perhaps there is a semblance of truth here.

And while it was easy to laugh off Stewie2K’s jittery spray, his missed smokes on Nuke, or his lack of confidence sometimes, at other times his impact in unlocking m0NESY and NiKo was clear. Selfless, brash, and determined play by Stewie2K set G2 on a victory course that charted through a hard-fought campaign against MOUZ, Liquid, FaZe, 9z, and Vitality to a brutally fought tournament victory. And my oh my were the games thrilling, close, and scrappy. An homage to days of less clinical Counter-Strike that hooked us all.

Why does it matter?

For the statistician and the spreadsheeteer, stand-ins are correctly noted as being a downgrade most of the time. The history of CS is replete with the use of stand-ins at tournaments, as visa issues, sicknesses, and family events have invariably worked their toll on the ability of all five players to attend an event. And outside of a few notable examples, such as Justin "⁠jks⁠" Savage standing-in for FaZe at IEM Katowice 2022 to win the entire event in a triple overtime thriller, they tend to flop in performance output.

In baseball (European readers are allowed to cover their eyes here), sabermetrics refers to an analytical approach to the game that relies on statistics to measure in-game activity. In the world of esports, this kind of approach is presupposed by the nature of the very medium, but to continue the analogy, sabermetrics is an entirely different approach to a sport that simultaneously kills some of its fun.

We live in a world of uncertainty, of messy humans and messier competitions. The addition of Stewie2K into G2’s starting five in place of beleaguered (now benched) IGL Rasmus "⁠HooXi⁠" Nielsen for IEM Dallas slotted him into the role of a much needed, if individually underwhelming, designated hitter (to slightly further the baseball analogy) for the team. He was in the right place at the right time to make some individual plays that then unlocked his teammates.

This was a certain factor in G2’s success, primarily in finding breathing room to let their skills shine and dominate the server at the expense of their opponents.

Like so many other sports, and in particular ones with single participants or small teams, e.g. tennis, basketball, and CS, the mental aspect is a huge factor in team performance. One overly relaxed flow state later and a good player can easily find themselves standing perched on a podium, wondering how they arrived through a haze of glory. On the other hand, one bad premonition, one taste of bad blood in the team, or even one bad sleep schedule can quickly send champions tumbling back to earth, despite all their practice and mental fortitude.

Statisticians, of course, hate this.

There is no room in the world of rankings and ADR for aura, or vibes, or intangibles. The very concept that a stand-in can be snatched piecemeal off the streets of San Francisco, pulled through the vape-pen fumes of 4AM FACEIT queues, and be used to revive an erstwhile dying roster is anathema to the world of the statistician.

And while a simple eye test of Stewie2K showed he did not have the sufficient aim, spray control, or decision making of a tier one pro in 2024, he somehow managed to continually have an impact in G2’s matches as well as on their mental overall.

Over-contrived comments about storylines and aura aside, there is something to be said for the fact that it has been Stewie2K who has pulled three fairytale runs out of the hat in his CS career, and come to define the region itself.

Whether it is the mocking eye of God peering at us from the sky, or the indelible streams of entropy moving history in one particular direction, it seems that Stewie2K has figured out the art of being in the right place at the right time. And that skill has saddled him with winners’ trophies and medals, something his detractors generally cannot be said to possess.

Past, Present, and Stewture: What Next?

There is pristine but sterile CS (old Astralis and current MOUZ come to mind), and then there is messy but dynamic CS. The former almost always wins. But we are far more likely to remember the latter (and content-brained Americans rejoice as a result).

Stewie2K’s run with G2 took us back to the early CS:GO days when tournaments were free-for-alls and volatile matches were a given, and while this will not be a longtime trend, it was good to be reminded of the existence of that side of the game. It brought back many old fans and reenergized many new spectators.

But will Stewie2K be able to run with this hypercharged momentum and find himself back in the world of top tier Counter-Strike again? It’s hard to say for sure as the outspoken American certainly has a high estimation of his own ability and tends to ruffle feathers within an already anemic and insular American scene. In a recent interview with Alex "⁠Mauisnake⁠" Ellenberg on his stream, Stewie2K seemed confident that he would return in some capacity and relatively soon.

But in that same interview, Stewie2K couldn’t help but spill the tea quite extensively on G2’s internal issues and awkward leaderless environment. This openness, or perhaps call it obliviousness, certainly rubbed many readers and community members the wrong way, and suffice to say we at the least should not expect the American to be invited to join G2’s current four-man roster in the near future.

It is his very tendency to be heedless and bold that has both propelled him to boundless success in CS, but also contributed to his very own downfall during the waning Liquid days in 2019 and subsequent disastrous (and infamous) stint on Evil Geniuses. In a way, Stewie2K is still climbing out of a hole he dug back then, and while the Dallas run is certainly a large leg up, he will need to keep climbing. Life is brutal with accountability for one's past like that.

It is also nearly certain that a phenomenon like Stewie2K’s IEM Dallas run won’t come around for a long time; it is a statistical outlier on an X-Y axis that lives on an island all of its own. After all, sport is a tough and remorseless arena. Outliers are quickly squashed or countered, and one trick ponies go by that name because when you shock your opponent with novelty, their adaptation comes ever faster. Going beyond the delicate balance of a competitive dance into the world of all-out frenzy opens up a player to self-implosion.

A 1970s tennis writer once exclaimed, “His winners look like they should count for two points,” when watching Jimmy Connors play in the Wimbledon final. We don’t get two points for a faster serve, nor do we get two rounds added to the scoreboard off the back of an instrumental game-winning clutch. Stewie2K will not get an extra two points added to the scoreboard for his clutches or aura, even if they may explosively result in tournament-bending results from time to time.

Whether we like it or not, we are hemmed in by the parameters and brackets that statisticians throw at us, kept to a fixed range in any direction we seek — a sort of observable universe of potential where we are located directly in the referential center. And as much as the statisticians are hounded by unpredictability and unforeseen consequences, so we too are kept fixed in place by medians and means. Thus, we shouldn’t expect Stewie2K to overshoot his average median any time soon, at least without putting in a lot more work to modernize his play, something he alluded to in his Mauisnake interview.

Slots in tier-one teams are limited, and not many free ones come walking along. As entertaining as Stewie2K’s brief resurgence in the limelight was, and as likely as it is that he will emerge in some capacity somewhere again, the law of medians will prevail. So, by all means, you can expect that the next title will be claimed by the five most aura-free, yet professional, Europeans you’ve ever laid eyes upon.