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GUIDES
Simple Radar
© 2026 TLDR Media, All Rights Reserved.
...Endpoint. Not innuendo.
It’s all kicking off this week. GamerLegion are mad at Big Valve, BC.Game are stuck in 2020 and… are we forgetting something big?
IEM Katowice’s group sorry “Main Stage” has come to a close, and it’s been… interesting.
Turns out the rumours of NAVIs death were greatly exaggerated.
They rose like Christ, slapping Spirit with the proverbial crucifix. Even the mighty MongolZ fell to NAVIs crusade, a deserved 2-0 went AleksiB’s way. We’re not sure why NAVI can’t stay good for extended periods. Maybe Finns operate better in the winter? We’re grasping at straws here.
The MongolZ, by the way, set themselves up for this meeting by beating GamerLegion and sending them to the depths of the lower brackets.
Spirit knocked them out there, setting up a playoff meeting with Virtus.pro.
Over in the other group, Eternal Fire keeps taking wins.
They knocked out FaZe in an absolute nail-biter of a game. Okay, the first map was a blowout thanks to a MAJ3R masterclass. But who cares, map 2 had 23 rounds of overtime. That’s a whole extra map and a competitive one at that. EF earned this win.
A nice bonus, by the way, is that FaZe took care of G2, paving the way for EF to have a very achievable road to the finals.
Big shoutouts to Eternal Fire, who have continued to be one of CS2s most dangerous prospects. Now how cool would it be to see XANTARES lift a Katowice trophy?
It looks like the Valve Regional Standings (VRS) are an absolute mess, full of loopholes, inconsistencies, and glaring issues - who would’ve thought?
This past week, several key figures in the scene have spoken out against the current format of the VRS. The movement was sparked by Endpoint, who announced they were putting their CS division on pause, citing "changes in the CS landscape" as one of the reasons behind their decision.
GamerLegion also raised concerns about discrepancies that "significantly impacted their eligibility for recent invites". Essentially, since other teams were eliminated early from Katowice, they were able to benefit from their earnings, which boosted their VRS ranking. Meanwhile, GL, still in the tournament, missed out on these points and subsequent invites because they hadn’t yet earned the prize money by the cutoff. We swear we’re not making this up.
One of the many issues, and arguably the most significant, is pretty clear: if you’re a new team looking to climb the ranks and break into the big leagues, you’ve got a grueling task ahead of you.
There simply aren’t enough open qualifiers and lower-tier ranked events to start building up VRS points. As Endpoint highlighted in their statement, this results in a “much smaller and internal ecosystem”, which predominantly benefits the top-30 teams that receive all the invites to the major ranked events.
It's not just the organizations speaking out - players are voicing their frustrations too.
A few hours after the Endpoint announcement, Snappi expressed how it’s “borderline impossible to grind rank” and how Valve has “fully closed down the entire system”. While Snappi has every right to be upset, it's worth noting that NIP still receives wildcard invites - something most teams aren’t even eligible for. So, in a sense, he’s actually gotten the easy way out.
All in all, it’s clear that the VRS has created more problems than it’s solved, leaving us to look back at the partner system and wonder how they’ve managed to create something even worse. Valve pls fix.
Have you always wanted to see Mauisnake and apEX fight? If so, this might be the podcast for you.
Every so often, the second tier of Counter-Strike churns out some moves that feel like big deals. But that isn’t necessarily a good thing.
In the last couple of weeks, BC.Game made the news because they benched GuardiaN, just two months after he returned to competition to play for them. nawwk was the man to replace him, and he isn’t the only new face to join the roster.
This week, BC.Game have also announced that CYPHER and nexa will be entering the fray, replacing CacaNito and Lekr0 and alongside jkaem, reforming a core that used to play together on BLEED.
Now, we know what you’re thinking: “Lekr0 is still playing in 2025?” And yes, we asked ourselves that same question.
Apparently, the answer is now no…
We have no idea if this team is any good. Results while the core was on BLEED suggest that it could be on the cusp of breaking into the top 30, but that doesn’t mean they’re automatically any good.
In all honesty, this is just a team that we’ll probably never have to watch play. That could be a good thing, who knows? We’ll have no idea, but that’s more down to Valve and the absolutely fantastic rules they have enforced for 2025.
Slightly further up the chain, 3DMAX are also apparently making moves, KRL has reported that the French team will be replacing Djoko with body.
This is a move that we frankly just don’t understand. bodyy has been at a plateau in his career for a while now, both with French teams and with fnatic. 3DMAX were finally breaking though and beginning to look dangerous on LAN, so why potentially upset that?
Is bodyy a player that can seriously take them to the next level? Maybe if Cache was to come back.
Illustration by Crash_ Source:ESL
There’s good news, and there’s a tiny bit of bad news.
The good news is we have five of the best, most exciting, craziest teams in the world duking it out for one of the most prestigious trophies in Counter-Strike.
The bad news is there are six teams in the playoffs.
Sorry, Virtus.pro, we don’t mean to be mean, it’s just… without FL4MUS (who only had a visa until playoffs - clearly they weren’t expecting to be any good either), you’re significantly less exciting. And we weren’t that excited before.
They probably won’t last long against Spirit, and we don’t just mean they’ll be out in the first game, we mean that the game quite literally won’t last long. After all, this is a VP missing one of their better players and going up against donk.
Fortunately, the game before that is one we will absolutely be there for.
The MongolZ, everyone’s second team, is playing against Eternal Fire, everyone’s third team. These are two very likable teams, playing really well and with a shot at an arena semi-final.
It’s a good match-up for both; neither has played that much in an arena, so it’s a fair fight, and they both probably feel they can win this game. They both probably feel they can win the whole event, and they’re probably right.
We just want to see XANTARES play like he has been in an arena. We had his evolution from onliner to offliner - now we need his evo from group stager to arena-er. Needs workshopping.
Waiting for those two is Team Vitality, and waiting for Team Spirit is NAVI. Again, these are amazing games that could go either way.
NAVI vs. Spirit is proving to be this generation’s big game, and it might just decide the outcome of this tournament.
You better not be leaving the house this weekend. Yes, that’s a threat.
