The CSPPA, or the Ceaselessly Shady Professional Players Association as Thorin would call them, were accused of acting as an agency to players by FLASHPOINT, last week, as you know, right? We told you all about it in the newsletter, so if you don't know, then you ignored us. We're not upset. Honestly.

CSPPA basically cast it aside as 'giving free advice', essentially saying "we didn't do it, but if we did, it's normal in other sports" which definitely isn't suspect at all. It reminds us of when OJ Simpson wrote a book called "If I Did It".

We were harsh on FLASHPOINT because it seemed they were standing on shaky ground, but when HLTV are sticking up for Thorin's side, something is up.

HLTV's Luis Mira suggests that the site has seen evidence that personnel at CSPPA WERE involved in the Heroic/FunPlus Phoenix deal and a large part of the reason the deal fell through, with es3tag joining Astralis. FunPlus Phoenix were forced into rebirth before they even came alive, which makes the name oh so fitting.

Here's the cookie cutter explanation: CSPPA has senior members that are also working for Danish Elite Athletes Association, which already is an oxymoron, and they got some money for representing players. While the CSPPA deny that those senior members represented anyone but Astralis (but wait, didn't you say you weren't acting as agents earlier?), HLTV believe that to be lies too.

Team owners, notably the Vitality owner, have called out the CSPPA for their Conflict of Interest and all-round opacity, but when did an employer really like their employees unionizing?

BIG, and XANTARES specifically, have been nigh unstoppable as of late, and their run at cs_summit 6 was no exception. It is online, but you know the saying: When life gives you Covid-19 and cancels all LANs, you say screw that and steamroll everyone.

The cs_summit 6 playoff looked like business as usual for BIG, who took out GODSENT and Fnatic 2-0 in the playoffs, only to be stopped by Zyw... sorry, Vitality, in three maps in the upper bracket final.

The Grand Final of the tournament saw a rematch of the latter, after BIG climbed out of the lower bracket at the expense of OG. No miracles for the miracle boys. The Grand Final itself was a volatile affair, with no maps going the distance and BIG asserting their dominance by outplaying the French team in 4 maps.

The final score of 3-2, which was mainly due to Vitality holding a 1-0 advantage going into the match, belies how dominant the Germans were. Not a single player on BIG had a negative K:D, while RpK ended with -25. CS:GO is a game of 10 players, and in the end XANTARES will carry BIG to victory online.

With the conclusion of cs_summit 6, it's also time to look at the European Regional Major Rankings GODSENT have jumped to fourth place, and North have saved face so far by climbing in to Challenger-status territory. OG are now also technically Contenders, but hunting season is still open for the lower spots of the Rio Major. As usual, you can find the full rankings over on Liquipedia.

A savvy reddit user by the name of birkir discovered a recent patent application submitted by Valve, seemingly having to do with Valve's newly introduced "Trustfactor". It would seem Valve are trying to patent a process they have developed in order to keep games clean. Well wouldn't that be great.

Now before all of you go and analyse every single page of the patent to get that competitive advantage, it is not necessarily relevant for the version of Trust Factor Counter-Strike uses, it describes more of a "big picture" situation.

The patent describes, among other things, how the system would work, what variables would be taken in to account, how certain accounts could be protected from falsely getting a bad trust score, and of course what the use is for such a system - to make us go back to silver, obviously.

One important thing to remember is that with this patent, Valve is not trying to copyright the implementation they have of the Trust Factor in CS:GO, but rather the general idea and application, along with the process of creating and maintaining the Trust Factor.

The patent is not only great if you want an insight into what potentially makes CS:GO's Trust Factor work, but also on how any other competitive game with a matchmaking service might implement a Trust Factor. We still don't trust OUR Trust Factor though.

• The one and only Russian Major champion and womanizer Dosia was recently banned on Twitch. He was just too hot to handle...
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• ENCE have decided to become that one annoying friend who participated in an exchange program and correct everyone on the pronunciation of Jamppi.
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• If you were still wondering why a certain competing FPS is not as good as Counter-Strike, then wonder no more as Beyond The Summit has you covered. Just good old fashioned shootin'
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• Thorin has done it again. In a new show called Strat Book he sits down with the masterminds of CS to talk about, well... CS. Episode one sees him talk with Peacemaker. Maybe we'll finally know why he leaves and rejoins all his teams?
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• We're happy to report that we aren't the only ones getting CS:GO'd. We feel you NAF.
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• Despite their loss in the Grand Final of cs_summit 6 Europe, Vitality are still most definitely confirmed to be the first team at the Rio Major. Way to go ZywOo team!
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• n0thing and MDL have come out with a series of educational videos about CS and what mistakes to avoid, including what to do and what not to do on Dust 2. Our recommendation? Don't queue Dust 2.
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• meyern went in to detail about his time on MIBR with HLTV, stating that he doesn't feel he was the right piece of the puzzle that is MIBR. We don't think anyone knows for sure who is though, meyern.