Loading…
GUIDES
Simple Radar
© 2026 TLDR Media, All Rights Reserved.
After rain comes a rainbow.
We thought rain’s benching would be the biggest story this week, but come on - this is Counter-Strike.
As always, there’s been some controversy, but this time no one knows exactly who to blame (except for us, that is).
That is the question.
For Liquid and NIP, the answer is pretty simple: withdraw from the Budapest Major EU RMR - better known as Frag Blocktober 2025 - just days before it begins, and reap the rewards.
But how did we end up in a reality that encourages teams to drop out right before a tournament starts?
Well, who else could be to blame? Valve and the VRS, of course.
Fair warning before we dive in: we’ve now step into nerd territory. We’ll try to keep it simple enough to not bore you to death, but detailed enough so you get the full picture.
It all begins with the Frag Blocktober 2025 LAN, the final VRS ranked tournament before the Budapest Major invite cutoff. Naturally, when it was announced back in August, everyone and their mother rushed to sign up - looking to squeeze out every last VRS point before the deadline. The original 32 slots sold out in just three minutes, forcing the TO to expand the field to 48 teams.
But as the event drew closer, problems began to surface.
As you may know, Valve relies entirely on data gathered by HLTV to run the VRS. This means that if an event isn’t covered on HLTV - even if it’s considered a Ranked competition by Valve - it has no effect on the rankings.
As you can imagine, this opens the door to serious integrity issues. And, surprise, they didn’t take long to appear.
HLTV initially announced it would cover only Frag’s Playoffs, leaving the group stage out. This opened the door for teams to intentionally lose in groups - without any VRS penalty - in order to get deeper in the Playoffs and play an extra, potentially easier match.
After former Complexity GM messioso called it out, HLTV was quick to adjust its plans, announcing that they were going to start coverage from the Round of 16 instead. That fixed one issue, but left another open.
By opting not to cover groups, teams like Liquid and NIP - already guaranteed at the Major and knowing they wouldn’t lose points for withdrawing - opted to pull out just days before the event began. Now, those spots go unfilled, denying other teams a chance to play.
Naturally, this raises a whole new set of questions about how the VRS is managed.
How does a competitive system reward teams for withdrawing just days before an event? If we’re a well-resourced team with the means to travel, what’s stopping us from signing up for every VRS LAN that pops up and then bailing at the last minute if we don’t feel like playing?
But the biggest concern - one that much of the community hasn’t fully grasped - is that this is not HLTV’s fault.
Valve is relying on a third-party business whose goal is profit, to regulate a competitive system. If HLTV decides that covering a particular stage of an event is too costly or simply not worth the effort, they are entirely within their rights. The responsibility lies solely with Valve. It’s up to them to ensure a fair and level playing field, free from loopholes and integrity issues.
Don’t hate the player, hate the game.
Thanks to the Cologne ticket prices, the cost of attending events are a hot topic right now. But look guys - TOs have to make money somewhere.
With that in mind, if TOs were to switch to subscription models for if you’re watching from home, would you be down for it? And how much would you pay?
We’d love to hear your thoughts, so just respond to us in an email and leave your initials or gamertag for a chance to be included in the next edition!
What happens when you mix Counter-Strike with history? Some mildly offensive comparisons, apparently.
You’ll have to watch this week’s Overtime on Inferno episode to see what we mean by that, unless you’re Stewie or EliGE, in which case, maybe don’t. Also sorry. Seriously.
If you’ve been paying any attention to the last run of tournaments, you’ll know that every LAN win is worth it’s weight in gold for many teams. The looming VRS cutoff date of October 6th is fast approaching - and also happens to land in the middle of EPL Season 22, obviously.
As aizyesque spoke about in this week’s deep dive, it’s been a bit of a nightmare to keep track of who will make the major, and who’ll unfortunately miss out.
But is it really unfortunate if we don’t have to watch VP stink it up?
Shoutout to the main man Finn aka MischiefCS2 whose been keeping us up to date with all the bullsh-t. We’ll be using his data to get into what’s what!
As of October 1st, 15 of the 16 EU teams are pretty much locked in. Pretty much.
Stage 3 hosts Vitality, Spirit, Falcons, MOUZ and Aurora - or as we can more accurately call them - the same teams that are in every arena anyway.
Stage 2 is full of familiar faces too, notably G2 and NAVI, who are joined by perennial bottlers 3DMAX and Team Liquid, who, after a pretty crazy FISSURE Playground 2, they jumped from a 61.7% chance, to 99.9%.
Cracking system lads.
Rounding out Stage 2 is… Astralis?! This will mark their first Major berth since PGL Antwerp, in 2022. Some run for the greatest organisation in CS history…
And finally, our beloved Stage 1. FaZe Clan sans rain are at the top, along with dark-horse GamerLegion. The Ukrainian boys in B8, Jame and friends in PARIVISION, and finally - after a long rebuild and many failed attempts - NIP are BACK at the Major. Although they did pull out of Frag, to avoid any chance of losing LAN games, which is fair enough. Sh-t system causes sh-t happenings.
The last team in with a chance of a Stage 1 Major invite is Gentle Mates, after their impressive Stage 1 run at EPL. There is a minute chance that SAW can overtake them, if they have a crazy performance at Frag Blocktober, but it does look set in stone for the Spanish side.
Those that are missing out include HEROIC after their woeful performance at EPL, VP after their woeful performance at the Swedish border, and fnatic after a spree of online losses to questionable teams.
For Stage 3 across the pond, FURIA and PaiN are locked in. Passion UA (NA) and Legacy are looking settled in Stage 2 also.
Stage 1 gets seriously stinky: MIBR, Imperial, NRG, M80, ODDIK and Sharks, not really the greatest pound-for-pound ranking, is it?
We can’t help but notice that there are only three North American teams in the entire Americas ranking, which really is a sign of the times for God’s favourite region (self proclaimed).
These predictions come after the end of FERJEE Rush, whatever the f-ck that is. But there’s still chance for some changes throughout Frag. Wildcard and BESTIA could pull it off with a crazy run at the BYOC event.
These aren’t so much predictions and more just facts at this point, but the teams we can expect to see from Asia are of course The MongolZ straight to Stage 3. TYLOOas the sole representatives in Stage 2. And Lynn Vision, FlyQuest and Rare Atom in Stage 1, joined by Mongolian first-timers The Huns. Seems more interesting than the Americas tbh.
All in all the Major is looking pretty stacked, but we’d be remiss to not mention how much better this time of year would be if we had an RMR to look forward to. The calendar is packed, but so many events just don’t have the gravitas worthy of Major season, and that’s a damn shame.
Well, in the end it all made sense. The destination was normal, but the journey was wild.
If we told you Astralis, G2 and FURIA all made it through the first stage of ESL Pro League, you’d think ‘well obviously. Why are you even telling me this? Should I just sign up for the other website’s newsletter instead?’, wouldn’t you?
That would be burying the lede a little, though - as all three went through in the 2-2 games.
FURIA, hot off the back of some of the best CS we’ve seen them play since Despacito was in the charts, found themselves 1-2 after losses to HOTU and Legacy, while G2 had lost to B8 and Gentle Mates to go 1-2.
Astralis had lost to ENCE and GamerLegion to join a 1-2 bracket that was remarkably stacked for such an unfashionable stage.
Sadly, all three won their respective next two games, with FURIA beating B8 from 0-1 down, Astralis smacking Legacy on map three to complete their own reverse sweep, and G2 keeping it clean against ENCE.
Boooooring!
You might be wondering who went 3-0, in that case, and you’ll literally never guess. Unless you read the last newsletter, in which case you will actually have heard of both HOTU and Inner Circle before the former’s mention in this here story.
HOTU beat FURIA, B8 and ENCE, which is about as legit as a 3-0 can be at this stage of the event, and generally just looked like a team who’d been at this level for a while. You’ll probably know n0rb3r7 but nobody else on this team, but we love the name dukefissura.
Inner Circle have even fewer players you’ll know, but a 2-1 win from behind over Gentle Mates is nothing to scoff at, and that was after beating GamerLegion and 3DMAX. All teams who are way, way above them in the VRS rankings, losing to them in the Swiss system.
Food for thought. If only we had some sort ofSwiss system qualifier for the Major where teams like this could play against 3DMAX and GamerLegion and fraud-check them.
If you’re looking for players to watch on these teams, mizu from HOTU was the highest rated player in the whole stage. His stats page has more green than Snoop Dogg’s house. Dawy from IC had a 4.00% round swing, which is wild - if he kept that up, he’d be doing better than ZywOo, and he’s only 18.
Gentle Mates ended up making it through 3-1, and looked good doing it, while 3DMAX and GamerLegion did pass the fraud-check to also make it through 3-1.
If you swapped HOTU and Inner Circle with G2 and FURIA, this would all make perfect sense.
Actually, in retrospect, G2 just scraping through is actually more on brand if anything.
And so rain’s time on FaZe has come to an end at 3541 days. For context, that’s just shy of ten years and also shorter than the length of time since any of us last spoke to a female.
We’re old now. We don’t get out much. Don’t worry about us. We’re okay. We promise
(This is a cry for help)
An incredible run given how short spells on teams can be in esports, he won everything there is to win with FaZe and his role in those victories will see him forever written into Counter-Strike history.
It’s that length of time, though, that is probably the most impressive thing about it. It’s hard to remember a year in which someone wasn’t calling for his head. Whether it was just down to a dip in form or because a younger and potentially more exciting player had come along, rain has always had his detractors, but the giant Norwegian always remained strong. And, impressively, always proved those people wrong.
Even this year, after struggling thanks to the painful EliGE era, rain bounced back as FaZe bid farewell to their bald fraud. So much so that his benching almost felt unfair.
Almost.
Unfortunately for rain, he is now 30. That might be a tender 14 years of age in Serie A terms, but this isn’t Italy (or football for that matter) and given that FaZe had already signed his replacement in jcobbb, it was time to close the door on the rain chapter.
A brutal reminder that there’s no room for sentimentality in competitive disciplines - even if a certain Frenchman says otherwise - removing rain now allows FaZe to push on as a team and get ready to try and make a third CS2 Major final. And ultimately, they need to move on quickly and efficiently if they ever want to win again before karrigan turns 100.
It’s sad. But it’s also life. And, hey, at least the big man isn’t retiring. He said he’ll be sticking around for a while still and even be open to IGLing, so maybe one day in the future we’ll get another tear-jerker of a benching video to sob into our keyboards over.
Seriously, FaZe, f-ck you guys for that one. Even us cold-hearted b-stards found that hard to watch.
For real though, it’s hard to imagine a FaZe without rain. Like KRIMZ with fnatic, rain on FaZe was one of the last bastions of a time we long for. When life was simpler, bills didn’t have to be paid, and we weren’t concerned with things like ‘VRS’ and ‘sub-tick’.
Better times.
And speaking of better, in a world where FalleN moves for $750k and kyousuke costs apparently$2 million, rain is one of the better usages of $20k from an esports organisation.
It’s certainly better than we’d do with $20k... David Beckham surgery, anyone?
