The cloud that is currently cast over NA CS is vast. And it’s dark. And right now it looks like it might never go away.

But we’re here to remind you that it will.

The butt of Counter-Strike related jokes for as long as we can remember, no one expected Cloud9 could ever win a Major, and it was definitely unexpected when Liquid usurped Astralis and completed a Grand Slam run in a time that will likely never be beaten. But those things both happened.

This dark period might feel like it’s been here for a long time, and for some of you reading this, you might never have known an NA without a cloud over it. It first appeared some time around COVID and the release of VALORANT, which we have to constantly remind ourselves was now five years ago.

Dark times.

But it isn’t the first dark period NA CS has had to endure. From winning ESWC 2005 and CPL Summer 2006, NA sunk in the wake of CGS, an international event that aired on American TV and forced teams to move over to CS: Source.

It was meant to be part of a boom for Counter-Strike esports, but it ultimately failed, and the players who called time on their careers as a result of its franchise and relocation model left NA without many of its most experienced figures.

Sound familiar?

It all seemed very bleak back then, perhaps even bleaker than it does now, but NA still managed to bring itself back from the brink. A new wave of players rose up, and those players went on to be Grand Slam champions. Major champions. They wrote their names into Counter-Strike history for the rest of time.

For all we know, NA’s real peak in CS hasn’t even happened yet. Who knows what players might rise up, or what the current crop of players might be able to activate in them.

NA isn’t without hope. It never has been. It’s just going to take the right people and some time.

And given how large NA is and how long CS has endured in an incredibly turbulent industry, we’ll say that they’ve got plenty of both.