Valve has introduced that Counter-Strike: International Offensive’s first Main of 2022 can be held in Antwerp, Belgium, and hosted by PGL Esports. The Antwerp Sportpaleis would be the venue for the competitors’s later phases, and has a max capability of 23,000. The preliminary rounds can be broadcast in 4K from Might 9, and the playoffs happen over Might 19-22 (the bit held within the enviornment).
Hurray! Erm… besides final yr’s Stockholm Main, additionally run by PGL, was one thing of a multitude. It started with a bunch of audio and manufacturing points in the course of the early phases, with the printed slicing out solely at some factors, difficulties with the group noise being inaudible, commentators being too quiet or too loud, lengthy delays earlier than sure matches, and varied different gaffes. It reached the stage the place the analysts and commentary group had been taking the mickey. In PGL’s protection issues bought rather a lot higher after the early phases however, initially a minimum of, this was not a well-run Main.
So Counter-Strike followers didn’t reply to the information with overwhelming enthusiasm. There are many people simply dunking on PGL (“Why? They are absolutely trash hosts!”), others advocating for different broadcasters, and I suppose one of many slightly kinder comments is “They higher get their shit collectively. Having a serious on residence soil right here in Sweden and it being a joke of a manufacturing was embarrassing.”
Or, as this wag put it on the time:
The PGL main is nice, they only have to work on the customized HUD, sponsor banners, participant cams, participant brand’s, participant profile footage, replays, audio, delays, viewmodel settings and observing killsOctober 26, 2021
PGL had a foul time in Stockholm, it is true, however this can be a main organisation that has been round for 20 years and hosted numerous esports occasions over that point. There might be no excuses for a few of the stuff in Stockholm, however on the similar time one dangerous manufacturing doesn’t make PGL a foul manufacturing firm: One would hope it will get the message loud-and-clear, and units out to point out CS:GO followers what it could do.
The Main’s announcement additionally got here with a extra long-term aggressive change, and one that’s unquestionably for the higher. All tournaments have a rulebook and, till now, the Main rulebooks have been written by the organiser with ‘supplementary’ guidelines from Valve.
“These supplemental guidelines have advanced over time,” writes the CS: GO dev group, “and haven’t at all times been simple for followers or event organizers to seek out. To scale back confusion over these supplemental guidelines, we have now compiled our necessities right into a public doc that can be viewed here.”
The supplemental guidelines are, evidently, not probably the most thrilling learn on Earth, however having a transparent and public doc like that is good for the sport: particular person tournaments will nonetheless be capable to have their very own extra guidelines, however this doc comprises guidelines that can be uniform throughout all occasions.
Lastly, a new patch has made a change to quick matches in aggressive, among the many normal minor fixes. Brief matches are a comparatively latest addition to CS:GO that sees the same old spherical depend halved: A knock-on impact of this, some felt, was warping the economics of the pistol rounds a bit, so Valve has now “elevated the preliminary spherical loss streak to 2 to cut back the financial influence of pistol rounds.”
