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Plot twist: The drama in the PGL Major Top 16 tournament in CS: GO
Game developer Valve is enacting a new law that has created a storm on the net and is not making life easy for teams in the Legends phase
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Amit Begam
Saturday, 30 October 2021, 23:03 Updated: 23:29
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The fourth day of the PGL Major Stockholm 2021
After four days of close battles in the Challengers stage between the teams that made the long way to the PGL Major Stockholm 2021 tournament, we were left with the 16 teams that showed they are one level above all, and now it only remains to find out who will be the eight teams to advance to the final stage of the tournament: - Champions
.
But, it turns out that the developer of the game Counter Strike, Global Offensive, VALVE, has decided to tighten the rules regarding the presence of coaches in the game.
And no doubt the timing for that statement was just awful.
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(Photo: Official Website, HLTV)
The last day of the Challengers stage gave us a lot of action and we really got great games from the teams that were on the verge of relegation: Astalis, MOUZ, paiN, Spirit, BIG, Heroic and Movistar Riders.
(Photo: Official Website, HLTV)
The most notable game of all was between MOUZ and BIG where we saw these two teams fighting for the last place in the Legends stage, and we got a series of 3 maps each of which was a thrilling and quality Counter Strike roller coaster on both sides.
But in the end it was MOUZ who managed on the last map to take the reins and close the game.
MOUZ sniper (AWPer) Frederick "Acor" Gildstrand showed great play after in their first games of the tournament he did not give a good enough performance, but when they most needed him, he brought his most important performance since joining the team.
Statistics from all three maps (Photo: Official website, HLTV)
Of course it is impossible not to mention Astralis' victory over Spirit that secured their place in the Legends stage, after many fans raised doubts about their abilities following the darl they played at the start of the tournament, leaving only hope that they will be able to pull the momentum to the next stage.
Statistics from all three maps (Photo: Official website, HLTV)
We also saw Heroic's win over Movistar Riders which was a very enjoyable game to watch, the second map in this game was simply a display of quality counter-strike from the side of Heroic, which is a team that is always fun to watch its games.
Especially because of the reactions of the players in a victory or a good round:
Statistics from all three maps (Photo: Official website, HLTV)
But let's get to the Legends stage: the real action comes now when we'll finally get to see players like S1mple, Zywoo, Niko and many more legends of the game fight for a place in the Champions League.
So what exactly awaits us there?
(Photo: Official Website, HLTV)
In the picture above you will see all the teams that will play at this stage, and the format will be the same as the previous stage of the competition: 16 teams playing 2 BO1 games (only one map) in the first and second rounds, and then BO3 games (better than 3) to qualify for the next stage. Totally: A team that wins 3 games will advance to the Champions, a team that loses 3, will be relegated.
But in parallel with the celebration that followed the arrival of the Legends stage, there has been quite a bit of a storm in the networks in recent days after PGL released the following tweet.
"To clarify things, during the Legends stage, the games of the main broadcast will be played in the studio. The games of the second broadcast will be played from the training rooms."
Lots of players, coaches and people from the community have taken this statement very seriously.
Many have said that a major tournament must give equal conditions to all teams, and the difference between playing in a studio with lighting and cameras and playing in quiet training rooms is significant.
Many thought it was because of Corona's limitations, some thought it was a technical limitation, and we still did not get an unequivocal answer as to why they made this decision, but about 5 hours after posting this tweet and after a lot of feedback from the community, PGL came back from that statement and posted this tweet:
"All Legends stage games will be played in the studio"
The community is very happy about this news, and it's really really gratifying to see that PGL listened to the feedback and very quickly made a decision to back down from that statement.
But after everyone thought everything was fine and that it was possible to breathe a sigh of relief and continue the tournament, we received another interesting line from Astralis coach Danny "zonic" Sorensen:
"We did it! But in another comment, let us know now that we can not encourage our players tomorrow because of a new CS: GO law"
"They more or less want us to sit in our chair and do something just in time for a tactical timeout. You can't shout 'Nice' anymore."
It turns out that VALVE itself has decided to pressure the PGL to enforce the law that says coaches must remain completely silent during the game and speak only during breaks, and they must not even touch or encourage their players after a win.
This statement from VALVE's side created an even bigger storm than the studio story, coaches and players from all over the world came out with statements about how unnecessary and useless this law is.
(Daniel Kogan: Israeli coach in the South African ATK team
To Dislav "GuardiaN" Kovak, a legendary former player from Slovakia
Dan "apEX" from Desclair, captain of Vitality
But there were also those who tried to explain the logic behind the law, the most prominent being Michael Slavinsky, an Esports referee who was previously the ESL chief referee.
Many people have asked how serious this problem really is that VALVE insists on enforcing it so aggressively in Major, and Michael explains that behind this law is a serious problem of trust and integrity between the teams and the tournament organizers.
He says that one of the judges' serious problems is the language, if a team does not speak English then the referee will have a serious problem knowing exactly what information the coach is passing on to the players.
He further says that even when coaches could not talk to the players during the game, the players would write in the internal chat of the game some question and turn to the coach to get a nod of yes or no from him, and also that coaches would shout random things in foreign languages during the game and referees would not No idea what they said.
Another interesting statement that has emerged is that coaches can give instructions to the captain during the game regarding specific strategies with the help of various touches and gestures, as ESL senior Twitter official Ulrich Schultz wrote in a tweet below.
Again, the referees or tournament organizers have no way of knowing what things the teams prepared before the game and what codes they invented between them.
This may sound a bit far-fetched, but it turns out to be a serious problem.
And that gives minimal explanation as to why this law suddenly popped up, and why it was needed.
There is no doubt that the way VALVE conducted itself and the timing of this statement on the day the Legends stage begins is just awful, and it should have been communicated to teams long before the tournament started, but that's the situation, and Valve's way in quite a few cases, and no one is happy with it.
At the moment neither VALVE nor PGL have addressed or retracted from this statement, and it remains to be seen whether once again the pressure from the community will succeed in changing this decision or will it simply be the new reality of competitions and it will be interesting to see how other tournament organizers react to this law.
We will keep you updated on everything that will happen with this story, and of course we will continue to bring you daily summaries of all the games throughout the tournament.
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