Official: Shanghai will have vibes

If anyone wishes for all of the Majors stages to have crowds again, please give us a wish. You can send it to crew[a]readtldr.gg.

For the first time since the Rio Major, the Shanghai Major will have crowds for all three stages of the event.

Rio was really the only time we ever saw this at a full scale, but with that crowd having its own “quirks,” it’ll be really fun to see the whole major get the love it deserves. Especially with a Chinese crowd that proved to us this year that they have a lot of love for the game.

It’s especially cool for any surprise qualifiers who would normally not get this opportunity to play in front of fans.

These aren’t just small venues or studio crowds either. Cough Starladder cough. 

The Opening and Elimination stages (we really need new names guys) will have up to 5.000 attendees, whilst the playoff stage can go all the way up to 13.000. If you need context, the Spodek used for IEM Katowice holds around 11.000 people at best.

Too bad there won’t be any English-speaking talent to experience it though.

PGL announced they acquired the rights to broadcast the major, which was entirely expected. Yet one word in their announcement did go a little under the radar and might make all the difference. That word being “remotely.”

Analysts and casters won't be with the crowd. We’re sure especially casters would agree that having a crowd significantly improves their work. For a Major, this just feels a little disappointing.

Thorin did say PGL tried this before and reconsidered, so we hope they do that again.

The receipts never came

Do you remember Friday morning?

We should hope so. It was only three days ago. How much have you been drinking?

Suppose you do indeed remember, and you read our newsletter. In that case, you might recall us biting our collective tongues in a story about Maniac, who had been accused of sexual assault by multiple women.

Maniac, at that time, denied all allegations — but subsequently, the pressure grew to a point where he could no longer deny them, and took the French way out. He ran away — at least at first.

Originally he deactivated his account, but upon seeing that nobody had posted his statement (that one’s probably on you, bud), he reactivated it to post a pathetic, squirming half-apology that blamed alcohol and a bad childhood, largely.

Nobody cares. Please find the exit.

We tried to be fair a few days ago and not take a side, but if you’re admitting you did it after originally saying it was impossible and that you weren’t even there? We cannot, in good faith, even pretend to give you the benefit of the doubt.

We still don’t care for this part of the job, but not as much as we dislike people like this.

Maybe we’re being a bit too harsh. At least he stood up and admitted, he apologised, and he said he’d come back better.

If he’d done that immediately, maybe we’d have a shred of respect left — but he denied it outright initially and tried to sweep it under the rug. That is unforgivable.

The scene has plenty of other talent. Make space, and don’t come back.

Born to win

In case your Latin's a bit rusty, Natus Vincere have lived up to their name in every sense (read: the headline).

NAVI dominated Pro League’s Group A, cruising through three BO3 series without dropping a single map to secure their quarter-final spot. Sure, Lynn Vision, NiP, and Eternal Fire aren’t exactly titans of competitive CS, but the sheer dominance of NAVI’s performance stood out.

Everyone was on fire, and the stats back it up – 3 out of the top 8 players in the tournament are NAVI’s own: jL, iM, and w0nderful. How do you even play against this?

Eternal Fire, FaZe, and HEROIC rounded out the list of playoff-bound teams from Group A.

Over on Group B, Spirit scraped through with a shaky lower bracket run, facing off against The MongolZ and 3DMAX — teams they should’ve beaten comfortably.

Despite demon donk’s 1.59 rating over 11 maps — delivering highlights at an absurd rate - Spirit only managed one clean sweep in their four BO3s. Poor kid’s going to need a chiropractor real soon.

G2, MIBR, and The MongolZ will join Spirit as Group B’s Playoff teams.

Action in Malta will pick up again on Tuesday, with Group C and Group D’s opening rounds featuring some intriguing matchups:

🔮 Your talents lie outside the realm of Counter-Strike

👺 Mandatory CS2 hate

🏆 TO news

This TL;DR was written by aizyesque, shoko, Horizzon and napz.
Welshy coded the email and Incipiens copy edited.

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