On the back of teams cheating at the drop of a hat in every possible way, more scandals than mega-churches could manage to keep up with, and players dropping from the scene like flies, Counter-Strike analyst Richard Lewis proposed that we could be seeing the beginning of the end of CS.
Granted, predictions of games being ‘dead’ are a frank dime a dozen at best, but it’s difficult to shake the sheer amount of garbage permeating the scene at the moment while Valve continues to hold the esport scene at arm’s length and encourages everyone looking to make a quick buck in the industry in any way possible to just go ahead and keep running the scene.
It’s dire.
Some have pointed directly to ESL for killing off the NA scene, others have stated that the CSPPA decided to kill it off, and others still have their own reasons. Like Valorant taking a piece of the pie, much how Overwatch did, and Rainbow Six: Siege, and any other competitive title in the past two decades.
So there was a bit of a surprise when Ulrich Schulze announced yesterday that ESL has been brainstorming some ways to save the NA scene and make it a bit stronger than it has been in the past, as the self-fulfilling prophecy comes true time and again.
These steps include an improved and more structured path from MDL into EPL, set qualifying opportunities from NA into the EPT events and a revamped structure of ESEA to have a stronger focus on prize money team competition over individual play.
— Ulrich Schulze (@theflyingdj) December 10, 2020
There's a narrative out there that we killed NA CS:GO, and while we accept responsibility for the way things were communicated about the change, the decision to have a global division was not one we took lightly – there simply was no other way to keep the EPL business running.
— Ulrich Schulze (@theflyingdj) December 10, 2020
We saw this trend and spent a lot of time working out ways to address this. The first things will be announced in the next days. We are going to have more as we move into 2021. We invite anyone who wants to contribute to reach out to either me or @ESLqntm to discuss.
— Ulrich Schulze (@theflyingdj) December 10, 2020
The reality of things likely at least smells of COVID-19; the pandemic has done intrinsically critical damage to esports on an international scale; a medium that was frankly never the bastion of impermeability that many would have liked.
Just the briefest of glances over to Blizzard’s turbulent Overwatch League in its current rendition of the offseason can show that organizations are struggling for money and the ultimate outcome is absolutely up in the air.
Yet it’s easy to find doom and gloom in the current climate, where we all throw our hands up in the air and simply decide that it is beyond us as a species to fix whatever hardships come our way.
It’s far harder to band together once more as a community and find long-lasting shifts within the scene that can be constructed to ensure that a long-term road to success is built and promises safety for those willing to embark on the path to become one of the greats. Right now, with Chaos collapsing in spite of dropping most of the teams they’ve played against, we simply aren’t there.
Here’s hoping the ESL comes out with a banger of a plan to keep CS:GO well-engrained in the esport community on an international scale.
