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June 17, 2022

m0NESY is the best player of all time (citation needed), Valve missed the mark on some A1-S changes (possibly) and s1mple might do a dev1ce.

s1mple might take a break

Illustration by NovaH. Source: NAVI

s1mple doesn’t give a lot of interviews. But they’re always bangers when he does

He’s nearly as unfiltered as French assistant coaches. You’ll have to finish the newsletters to understand that punchline though.

Anyway, back to s1mple. In an interview with HLTV, he spoke about how he will “maybe take a break because I need to do things in life, like I need to move, I need to get a lot of documents... when you have a tournament after tournament you just have no time.”

Relocating from Ukraine is no easy task but the prospect of CS:GO without s1mple, even if it’s just a few months, is one we don’t want to think of.

The topic of relocation is a hot one right now — degster benched himself in Spirit because of the same thing.

He later clarified to Pley.gg that relocation is not off the cards permanently; it was the speed with which Spirit demanded the move to happen that caused the issue, not him ruling out leaving Russia.

“This [standing in for OG] is a chance for me to show that I can play in a team that speaks English” he said, adding that he would prefer “Europe more than CIS [except NAVI]” when it comes to his next team.

That’s easier said than done, however. Fellow CIS wantaway YEKINDAR seems to want a move to Europe too — but OG’s nexa revealed his buyout was “around $1 million”, which is going to be a huge stumbling block for all but a few orgs (time to flex those muscles, Liquid).

Whether Spirit will demand a similarly ridiculous fee remains to be seen, but CIS orgs are known for their bargaining skills (not you Gambit).

Big buyouts have scuppered many a sexy lineup, and there’s no chance of that stopping any time soon. nexa told HLTV that F1KU and NEOFRAG were “not cheap” but “the best we could have gotten for the price we could afford”, something that isn’t a great sign for OG’s short-term future, baller though NEOFRAG is.

We’re moving to a Sports model: can you afford to spend irresponsibly in the hope of winning a few tournaments? If you’re an EG or a G2 the answer might be yes but for most orgs, forget about getting your first choice, or even your second.

It’s moneyball or nothing.

Author: 
NER0

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Ready for playoffs in Portugal

Turns out degster is pretty good.

He’s left Spirit due to not wanting to relocate to Serbia since his girlfriend lives in Moscow, but he’s told the world he wants to play in EU. And with performances like that, there’ll be a whole host of teams interested.

He turned ENCE into mincemeat with a hard carry performance on Dust 2 before OG dealt ENCE a killer blow on Vertigo.

Even NEOFRAG and F1KU did well, despite nexa’s protestations.

Someone else who did well - excellent segue - was m0NESY, who won another spectacular 1v4. Yeah, another one. We know. You basically can’t play this situation any better than he did.

That 1v4 helped G2 to a rousing win against FaZe, who just haven’t been quite the same recently. karrigan made some sort of Faustian bargain to win the Major, and now he just can’t win a game.

OG had previously beaten NaVi, but it seemed they angered God. Not in a Christian ‘he’s started thunderstorms’ kind of way, in a ‘s1mple turned an entire enemy team into dust’ kind of way.

He’s still decent.

Vitality dropped a map, but just about squeezed past paiN. It must be down to their excellent comms; that apEX guy is such a great leader.

As always, if you want a take a look at any result in particular, the link is here.

And today the playoffs begin:

Author: 
aizyesque

Everyone is in crisis!

Tune in to this week's episode of Overtime on Inferno where your favorite hosts aizyesque and Logan Ramhap go deep on the biggest news in CS:GO:

  • Evil Geniuses’ capitulation
  • MOUZ’ embarrassing display in Dubai
  • 00NATION’s baffling decision making
Author: 
aizyesque

Valve unsuccessfully try to nerf the M4A1-S

Illustration by NovaH.

Old man yells at cloud. That’s more or less the TLDR staff’s reaction to Valve “nerfing” the M4A1-S by decreasing its mag size from 25 to 20.

You read that right.

No change to the price, the time to kill or the silencer. In fact, they’ve increased the overall amount of reserve ammunition from 75 to 80, making it a zero-sum game.

It’s like IOC banning Russian athletes from competitions, but allowing them to participate under a neutral flag. Nonsensical.

Maybe they should do something drastic about it. Like, what about making it an AWP without scope? Anything is better than this.

It’s not all bad though. Ancient has got some cool quality of life upgrades, removing a few unintended design issues, and re-arranging the B site slightly.

And then there’s this hidden gem:

Inferno:

-Increased bomb explosion damage from 500 to 620

What does that mean Mr TLDR? Well, it means that you now need to get your ass out of the bombsites, when the bomb has been planted if you want to survive.

No more stacking in pit and surviving if you plant for apps on A for example. This effectively means you’ll need to think more before plotting down the bomb.

If you’d like a visual example of how far away you now need to get, we have made a super easy overview on our Twitter.

Author: 
PHedemark

Stewie2k has p*ssed off the whole of France

Illustration by NovaH. Source: EG

Evil Geniuses spent a whole lot of money, convinced a highly respected coach to join their team with his support staff, and convinced autimatic to come back from VALORANT.

All that, just to find out that Stewie2k is, in fact, American.

And we’re not talking about his pathetic rating against good teams as proof of him being American - well, we sort of are, just not entirely. As outlined by EVY, he does in fact have a 0.55 rating against good teams.

Kind of a sly dig, but it seems like he earnt it.

EVY outlines quite how much of a word-we-can’t-use-in-the-newsletter Stewie apparently is. He, obviously, denies that he was anywhere near this bad.

Out of the server. He hasn’t tried to deny that he has a 0.55 rating against top five teams. Probably for the best, that.

Stewie does call it a dramatisation and an over-the-top recalling of the story, which… it probably is. Let’s be real. But if even a portion of it is true, it’s questionable.

Our favourite anecdotes include:

  • The players telling the coaching team their ideal coaching staff don’t really try to do anything because they’ve won a Major.
  • Refusing to take tactical timeouts when requested by MaLek.
  • Stewie2k not calling while the CEO was watching, and peeking without talking in officials.
  • Stewie ignoring MaLek to the point that he wouldn’t turn around when he talked (XD!).
  • Players giving up after round two.
  • EG calling Stewie2k a superstar.

While airing your dirty laundry via a journalist back home seems like a dick move, let’s not forget that EG reportedly cut him without telling him first. Which EVY also alleges in the linked article.

It’s hard to blame him for being a little bit bitter.

What’s next for Evil Geniuses? If this is true, and apEX’s claim that Stewie earns $40k a month is true, they are spunking money up the wall. It’s not like they have ten other players on their books, rea-

Ah, hang on. We might have found a solution.

In Stewie’s defence

Stewie went live on Twitch late at night to talk about everything that happened, and to be fair to the guy, took a lot of responsibility.

He agreed that he was largely to blame and wasn’t cut out to be a leader; even at one point saying that apEX was right. He was incredibly emotional, and admitted a lot of fault.

He agreed that him and MaLek got off on the right foot, and even said confirmed some parts. He explained that the reason he stopped calling at Pro League was because they were already out and he was out of ideas, suggesting they were woefully underprepared.

Maybe he could have listened to the coach he kept saying was trying to implement a system too quickly.

He admitted that he got tilted easily, but also suggested that EVY hammed up a lot of the details for drama. We’d agree on that, some of it was very dramatic.

He told the team that they should get someone else as IGL instead of him, claiming he wasn’t cut out for the role and he’s learnt that now.

We couldn’t help but feel a little respect for the man, even if he seemed like a terrible leader, he doesn’t seem like a terrible guy.

Author: 
aizyesque

apEX doesn’t hold back

🏎️ CS go vroooom

  • Shots fired (without aim-assist) at CoD pros by apEX, saying it’s just like F1 - it all depends on the equipment. Yeah, that’s right, go play a real game!
  • What a nice picture of a legendary icon of his sport, a top athlete who has both haters and fans. Oh and Verstappen’s there too.

↔️ Rostermania

  • nexa gives us a spicy leak, YEKINDAR apparently costs $1.000.000. Either VP were making a Dr Evil reference, or they’ve actually lost their minds…
  • Bit weird to call felps a god in your announcement that you’re transfer-listing him, don’t you think GODSENT?

🏅 Looking for a rankup?

  • This Inferno apps flash is absolutely brutal. No worries though, we’ve already forgotten how to throw it.
  • Do you like data? Do you want more data? Pureskill’s got you covered.
Author: 
napz
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