Here at TLDR, we typically refer to ourselves as a collective.

You know, it’s like every sc-fi film for the past 40 years: you manage to turn off that big f–ck off laser in the sky, our hive mind shuts off and we all keel over and cease to exist. What a terrible day that would be.

However, seeing as I’m going to talk about a recent experience I had playing the beautiful game, I’m going to talk in the first person in this one. That means you’re going to have to put up with my narcissistic nature and painfully sarcastic tone for however long it takes you to read this. Your poor things.

If you read every edition of this great newsletter - and why wouldn’t you? - you may have seen that we recently trialed out a new segment in our newsletter, affectionately titled “The Glue Factory”. And, after my recent Counter-Strike experience, I’ve decided it’s time for me to crash out once again.

Because hackers need, and I can not stress this enough, absolutely need, to be sent to the f–cking glue factory.

Let me set the scene for you: I load up the game, excited to play with my two good friends. We get a game of Premier Mirage.

Fantastic, I think to myself. Mirage is my best map (which is hard to pick one, I’m bloody excellent at this game) and Mirage also happens to be the best map in the game. The veto really couldn’t have gone better.

And then it happens. Round one. One guy on my team is afk, one guy on my team is cheating and presumably boosting Mr. Afk, and the entire - and I mean, entire - enemy team is hacking.

This isn’t just normal hacking either, this is those instant headshot, shoot you through every wall, may as well go and make a coffee and have a w–nk types of cheaters.

For the first game, we just laugh. It’s been a while since we’ve seen something so blatant. And to tell the truth, it’s actually quite funny. We lose 13-1 in 13 minutes, so we queue again. No biggy, we’ve had a good time.

But then it happens again.

And again.

Three games, three full teams of cheaters, and let me tell you, by then, the novelty had really worn off.

Seriously, in those three games you could count on one hand how many legit players there were in each game. And it wasn’t four or five.

Now, we all know the cheating problem in CS is bad, but honestly? I didn’t realise how bad it actually was. While playing these games, I discovered something about the psychology of cheaters that blew my mind. I’m actually still baffled by it days later.

I always assumed that people hacked just because it was funny, or because they were getting sh–t on and were either raging or thought they were giving a cheater a taste of their own medicine.

Perhaps it’s even just because they’re trying to give themselves a small competitive edge in yellow-level FACEIT. But no, this was far worse.

This was people expecting to play hack vs. hack, and actively getting wound up when they discovered they had “legits” on their team. Not only that, they were also furious that they were losing, even though the game they were playing was something more akin to Geometry Wars than anything like Counter-Strike at all.

So now I’m just confused. I could cope with the problem when I thought it was just for comedic purposes, or through rage, or because they at least want the illusion of a competitive match with their radar cheats.

But no, these guys with their aim-locking, trigger-botting, bunny-hopping shenanigans actually care about their results and load up the game still having the same desire that you and I, actually somewhat functional human beings, have to win.

And I find that f–cking mental.

With that in mind, I’ve come to the conclusion that the South Koreans have it right by making cheating in video games a criminal offence. However, I also think they don’t go far enough.

Instead, thanks to my conclusion that these people are genuinely dangers to society and shouldn’t be allowed to reproduce, I propose castration.

You might find that a little over the top, but extreme problems require extreme solutions. Just look at El Salvador.

We could, at least, send them to The Glue Factory. But the first time one of you actually looks up what that saying means, you might consider the castration idea to actually be the more… reasonable measure.

Either way, it’s about time Valve does something about this problem, because it’s the biggest thing holding back the greatest game ever created from being even greater. And that sucks.

Interview

MOUZ’s Hungarian sniper on cats vs dogs, who he thinks he has the best chance of surviving a deserted island with, and which teammate he’d trust to save the world in a 1vs1 clutch.

Why did you start playing CS?

Because of my brothers, I have two brothers and they are nine and eleven years older than me. When I was a child, they were like already playing with their friends. I saw them playing, and I just got influenced by them. Then I started to play on my own a little bit.

If you weren't a CS pro, what job would you imagine yourself having?

I'm not exactly sure but I think something IT or maths. When I was in school I was good at maths, I like working with or using numbers.

What's the strangest reaction you've gotten when you tell someone that you’re a professional gamer?

Maybe in the beginning when I was in school and sometimes I had to tell my teacher that I need to leave the school because I have a tournament. They were upset or they didn't understand, but I didn't have weird reactions.

Do you have a pre-game ritual?

I have a few. I work with our sports psychologist and I play with tennis balls, we have some exercises, he's dropping the ball and I need to catch, it's like a reaction time game. We also use these boards that light up and you need to hit the correct button and it's just like five minute quick exercises. It's good to activate the brain so you can think faster.

I also have a breathing exercise before the game, it takes five minutes and it's breathing with a sound going on. You breathe in five seconds, then you breath out five seconds.

How much is a can of monster?

A can of monster? Like this one? ~ gestures with hands ~ I don't know like... three dollars? Is that right?

Yeah, that’s spot on.

Nice

What’s your favourite song to deathmatch to?

I don't have an exact favorite song to play deathmatch on but I like house songs, like Fred Again.

Which player from any of your teams would you choose to win a 1v1 clutch for the fate of the world?

I'm probably picking Jimpphat. I think he's really good at clutching and also he's really sharp aim, you know. He's a lurker, he's last alive so he has quite good experience in clutching.

If you were stranded on a deserted island with one of your teammates, which teammate would you pick?

If possible I would choose my coach. He knows all the shit, you know? He would be ready. He's also really confident in different things, he's intelligent and I think I could survive.

Who would you least want to be on an island with on your team?

Probably Jimpphat. laughs I think me and Jimpphat would be in big trouble alone together somewhere.

If you could own a house located on one CS map which one would you choose?

I probably would live in Italy.... no, sorry, the lake map. There's a big house, you have a boat at the bottom, you can just go out, have a chill life.

Cats or dogs?

Now I'm more cat, I have two. We had two dogs for 14 years but they passed away when they got old. We decided to get some cats, and I Iove both dogs and cats but now I have cats so I'm a cat person.