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GUIDES
Simple Radar
© 2026 TLDR Media, All Rights Reserved.
Who needs NiKo when you can go cooking with his cousin?
mezii can’t get a win at home, and Vitality are just rubbish now. No, you’re overreacting!
This is newsletter number 599, by the way.
We never thought we’d do anything nearly 600 times, especially something as vaguely productive as this. Full disclosure, though - we still don’t make much money doing this, and we have partners and children and desires for new Steam games to feed.
We’re exploring some ideas before 2026, and one of those is a Wednesday deep dive starting next week. Expect a full-length article on something interesting or fun in the CS world once a week on a… well, Wednesday. Obviously.
We’ll trial it beginning next week. More details very, very soon!
As a Brit, being in the Wembley crowd is quite a proud experience.
The crowd, as little of it as there was at points, never missed a beat. They took every opportunity to boo, cheer, and slander everyone they could, and they always made sure their favourite was known.
We don’t do neutral crowds in Britain.
Of course, their big favourite was mezii, which makes a change considering the average perception of royalty within the UK. But just as Brits should, they made their disdain for the French known, and “F-ck you apEX” chants were heard on more than one occasion.
dephh, too, was applauded. The UK’s forgotten son as they have chosen instead to worship the likes of smooya, CYPHER, Thomas, and mezii, he was welcomed home as a hero, and his opponents MOUZ more than rose to the occasion as the stereotypical German villain.
Well, up until the point they played Vitality, that is.
For a scene that is often laughed at for not really existing, there’s no doubt that the UK still holds plenty of passion for our beautiful game.
Wembley might not have been a sold out LANXESS, it might not have even been the sold out Coldplay concert next door, but it was rocking the whole time, and as Englishmen, that makes us pretty f*cking proud..
God save UK CS.
Seriously, we’re f-cking hopeless at this game.
Wherever there’s competition and money involved, you can bet there’ll be people looking for shortcuts. And as we all know far too well, Counter-Strike is no exception.
This week, we’ve hit the jackpot. On one side, an alleged match-fixing scandal out of China, and on the other, fresh accusations of radar hacking deep in the jungle of online CS.
Both stories are a mess, but we’ll try our best to break them down for you.
So, let’s start with somebody we used to know. Sorry, we had to drop that one in.
It all began with a now-deleted Reddit thread, which outlined claims made by a Chinese whistleblower. He exposed an alleged match-fixing ring in Chinese CS, with former Rare Atom and TYLOO player somebody and his cousin Cheng Peng (Mr. C) at the center of it.
According to the whistleblower, somebody tried to recruit multiple players into the scheme. One of them was BOROS, who later came forward to confirm that somebody approached him with an offer to fix matches.
Mr. C was said to be the mastermind behind the operation, an already notorious name in the Chinese scene for all the wrong reasons. He reportedly pulled the strings behind two organizations previously hit with match-fixing bans: Wings Up and, more recently, ATOX.
Match-fixing, bribery, and illegal betting have long been problems across Asia, so these revelations aren’t exactly shocking.
And as if a massive match-fixing scandal wasn’t enough to show just how rotten competitive Counter-Strike can be, we also got a fresh dose of radar hacks to really brighten the mood.
The drama exploded on Twitter when birdfromsky, Keoz, and kONO’s coach Juve accused SENZA of cheating, backing it up with a long list of very suspicious clips.
Things escalated when a photo surfaced, allegedly showing byek’s setup, with a phone running a radar tucked under the monitor.
The org quickly denied everything, claiming the photo was fake and that the player on the broadcast cam wasn’t actually byek, but some unknown person. What the f-ck?
Unsurprisingly, the Twitter detectives weren’t buying it, so they got on the case.
Apparently, byek was running a fake webcam setup. A friend sat at the PC, broadcasting a screencast to make it look like he was playing, while the real byek used radar cheats freely.
In response, SENZA announced an “internal investigation”, later removing the player from the active lineup and fining him for $30.5k.
Overall, these are just two examples of the all-too-common practices that plague the game we love and further hurt an already fragile system.
But as long as whistleblowers and those willing to investigate and expose these scandals exist, there’s still hope.
Coming into this final, Vitality were hunting for their first trophy of the season.
The plan was simple, put the underdog down, catch a flight, then get the era back underway. G2 however, said f-ck you, watch this.
The game kicked off on Vitality’s first map pick, Dust II. They’ve boasted an impressive record on the map in recent months.
G2 didn’t particularly care about that though, and matys especially gave no f-cks as he lead the charge in a surprise 13-3 steamroll. It only made sense to believe Vitality would be the clear crowd favourites with mezii being on the scene, but G2’s coordinated aggression started to win over the hearts of London. As to be expected, f-ck you apEX chants ensued.
As exciting as the first map was, it looked like business as usual was going to continue for Vitality as they claimed two dominant 13-6 map victories on a row, securing G2’s first map pick and their second in the process.
Unlike on Dust II, ZywOo was especially up for it on Mirage, where he boasted a mind boggling statline of thirty-six kills and just six deaths. Oh, and this filthy one-tap.
Everything pointed towards Vitality closing things out Inferno, especially after they secured an early 6-1 lead. That didn’t last long though, as G2 clawed it back to 6-6 with matys ripping off heads in the process.
Things were back and forth from that point on. Even apEX who had otherwise been struggling got involved as he clutched out a 1v2 late in the game.
Although when the lights shined the brightest, G2 showed up to secure overtime regardless of their weaponry disadvantage. Then, with momentum on their side, they rolled Vitality over with 5 straight round wins in a row to push the series to a final map.
Train was the final map. In theory it was still anyone’s game, but once things got underway Vitality must’ve been experiencing deja vu as they got hit by another G2 CT-side blitz. T
he only way the hornets could turn things around was by doing the exact same back on their CT half, and as much as we wanted to believe, it seemed like they just didn’t.
G2 wasted no time as the new roster’s first trophy was in touching distance. As the crowd roared on with each kill, G2 marched into bombsite after bombsite. Until finally, the penultimate moment came as huNter- and malbsMd secured the series victory in a 2v3.
Better luck next time Vitality, with how deadly these samurai look, you’ll need it.
huNter-, you just beat who many people consider to be the best team in the world in a grand final, how does it feel?
I feel amazing. It's like a dream still for me, I need to sleep tonight to understand what we did in the last three days here.
You also beat Spirit in this event, is that a good marker for how good this roster can potentially be in the long run?
Yeah I just hope this is not our peak and this is not a honeymoon period. I want to continue like this next event because we have another one next week already. This is just the beginning of our story, I hope we'll continue this way. It feels amazing to beat IGL's like chopper, karrigan, apEX and FalleN. But this is still the beginning, we are a new team and people don't know what to expect from us so we are kind of surprised as well. Things will be harder from this point onwards, there will be more pressure on us.
Vitality have a pretty impressive record on Dust II, why were you so dominant on the opening map?
I don't know, we did nothing special and just played our own game. We prepared like we do for any other team, I didn't even know if they had a good win streak on the map. I don't think they really played their game on Dust II and we did, that's it.
How were you guys able to stay calm after being 2-1 down in the series, surely there must've been some nerves as a fairly new team in this situation?
As I said before we just didn't play with any pressure. We've been underdogs the whole event and we especially were in the final against Vitality since they're the team of the year already. We just came out the gates feeling no pressure since we had nothing to lose. We enjoyed the stage, we enjoyed the crowd, and we enjoyed playing with each other. That's all.
Despite Vitality having a British player you guys actually ended up with the crowd on your side at points thanks to your exciting play, how did that feel?
Yeah it felt amazing, especially since against FaZe we didn't have that much support and then against FURIA we had a little bit more. Then today I didn't expect to have it at all, although I think it was fifty-fifty in the end. It's just amazing and I'm proud of everybody. We are a team that has no ego, nobody can hate us I would say.
Will you guys be a trophy contending team this season from now on?
I think it's too early to say. The beginning of the season wasn't great but we are making progress every event. I'd say we are still not on the level of where we want to be, it might sound stupid that I've said that but in this event we didn't have to play Mongolz, Falcons and other missing teams that are good. All the teams are good so it isn't easy to play against anyone nowadays.
How proud are you of yourself as a new IGL now that you've won this event?
It's been a very hard job I would say, especially at the beginning. But it wouldn't be possible to be as good as I am this event without my teammates and without my coach who is amazing. They are helping me a lot, but of course I'm proud.
