Time for some more Counter Strike eSports news! The biggest story this week comes from the BLAST Premier Fall finals, where the players of Vitality and Mousesports refused the tournament organisers access to voice comms, in what is a pretty huge turn of events! Over the last few months tournament organises BLAST have been working to add some new features, including but not limited to players giving access to the organiser to record and store voice comms and recordings, while this may not seem like a big thing, it appears that some teams have had some bad experiences with this, with their “sensitive data” being shared with all the analysts and various others which of course, leads to tactical and personal information getting shared.
In a statement from CSPPA, the representative association for professional CS:GO players, they said;
“Ultimately, players have experienced that voice comms were shared with analysts and others which has led to sensitive tactical information and personal information being shared among people in the community.”
The CSPPA found itself on the backfoot again this week after 14 orgs called out the organization for failing to be there when teams need it most and focusing on already resolved issues.https://t.co/kiwdQP3egL#CSGO #esports #gaming
— The Esports Talk Team (@talk_esports) December 11, 2020
The game in question was set to start at 10:30ET, but due to the protest, the game sat waiting for almost 3 hours, however the protest seems to have worked. In a tweet made by Vitality player Dan “apEX” Madesclaire, he said “Ready to play! BLAST has promised to start talks with CSPPA regarding the use of voice comms and video. Let’s get started!!!” Vitality went on to win the game 2-0. However, the real winner appears to be the player’s rights. Ggs to all involved!
The BLAST premier fall finals are still ongoing, with Vitality playing against BIG in their semi-final, Vitality seems to be on a roll beating Mousesports and NaVi on their way here without dropping a map, while you may not get good odds on Vitality with them performing so well, it seems like it may be easy money, you can check out there are a lot of places to bet on eSports these days where most of the Betting Sites have lines on ESL Pro League, Dreamhack and this tournament, the BLAST Premier Fall finals.
In other news, the Dreamhack Masters Winter 2020: Europe finished on Sunday with Astralis running out winners against Mousesports! After a pretty rough start, losing their first match of the tournament to Godsent, they went on an insane lower-bracket run to get to the final, on their way they swept Liquid, G2, Gambit, and Furia. While it looked like Mousesports was cruising, that came to an end in the Grand Final!
Map 1, Train. Mousesports just couldn’t get things going, Astralis took the map 16-5 and if it wasn’t for Frozen, it would’ve been even worse for Mousesports! Map 2, Inferno. It seemed like Mousesports weren’t going to start clicking in this final after the first map, however, they put in a crazy performance on Inferno to cruise to an emphatic 16-3 win. Map 3, Nuke. This was a pretty thrilling game, Astralis made a substitution, putting in Bubzkji for Xyp9x. While he wasn’t the best player on the map, Magisk and Device had a huge CT side which ultimately won them the game, but with Ropz and Bymas amassing over 20 kills, it proved way harder than they would hope, in a pretty crazy game they won 16-13. Map 4, Vertigo.
Astralis flew out the gates to an early 6-1 lead, but Mousesports weren’t having that, they ended the half 9-6. Mousesports pushed on to a 14-11 lead but Astralis put their foot down winning 4 games on the rounds on the bounce to take the game to overtime. Astralis pushed to match point in the first OT round but Mousesports came swinging back and forced a second OT. With the game tied at 19-20, they had to take a quick pause for Karrigan to resolve a ping issue as he peaked at +100ms! After the restart, Astralis went on to win the last 2 rounds taking home the silverware with a 22-19 win!
With more online tournaments to come and even LAN events on the horizon, make sure you stay tuned to get a rundown of all things CS:GO!
