A Glorious Return: Why IEM Cologne Has Saved Counter-Strike: Global Offensive
When Natus Vincere and G2 Esports took to the stage at the Spodek Arena on March 1st 2020 for the IEM Katowice 2020 grand final, the shadow of the oncoming online era was already on the horizon. One of the great cathedrals of Counter-Strike, the Spodek Arena was silent as S1mple and KennyS led out their sides, with the outbreak of the Coronavirus forcing the organisers to shut the doors and conduct the event’s playoffs from behind closed doors.
The Online Era Begins
Within a couple of weeks of the tournament’s conclusion, the entire world had gone into various states of lockdown, and the CS:GO community had entered its online era. However, even back in the Spring of 2020, few in the industry could have ever imagined it would be well over 150 days before they would be able to taste the LAN environment again.
Mercifully, after eight months of online agony, the CS:GO world has taken one huge step into stepping back into normality with one of the most ambitious events in its long history. IEM Cologne is the first LAN event since Katowice, bringing together the sixteen best sides in the world with a $1 million prize purse up for grabs.
The success of the event so far has well and truly put CS:GO back on the map, renewing faith in the game and injecting some badly needed passion back into the scene for the community. One only has to look at the amount of aces, the clutches, how tight the matchups have been, the emergence of dormant sides such as FaZe Clan and the post-round
The Importance Of LAN
In the world of Esports, LAN tournaments represent the absolute pinnacle in competition. Not only is it synonymous with all the most fabled and prestigious competitions in the game’s history, but it represents an undeniable fair competitive field.
The best international sides have struggled to get together for bootcamps with all the current restrictions, giving a notable advantage to teams who are able to get together more frequently, and the Esports-staple issues around connections, hardware and ping are all removed in the studio environment on a local area network.
For the CS:GO community, the past eighteen months or so of online play has brought with it a plethora of scrutiny and questioning for the teams at the top table of competitive play. The likes of Gambit and Heroic have had very little experience at the top prior to the introduction of the online era, however they have simply dominated over the past year or so, leading to plenty of people questioning how good they will be when put on a level playing field against seasoned LAN veterans.
CS:GO has also been hit by numerous controversies around coaching bugs, taking advantage of stream sniping, latency connections, rematches etc., so the overall health and integrity of the competitive scene really does feel like it is approaching breaking point. LAN represents a removal of all of these doubts, and the success of IEM Cologne from player to fan could well go a long way in putting CS:GO back at the forefront of the Esports industry going forward.
Motivating The Scene
On top of all the scrutiny over fair play and competitive integrity, the CS:GO scene has been rocked over the course of the online era by a real noticeable drop in motivation and drive from some of the biggest orgs and players.
As well as direct legacy competition from other shooters in the Esports scene such as Call of Duty and Overwatch, CS:GO saw its biggest rival emerge during the online era with the release of Riot Games’ Valorant. The similarities between both titles have led to the two respective communities locking horns in an intense rivalry, and Valorant’s arrival on the scene has tapped into the lack of motivation in CS:GO’s online era, especially for those pros stuck in the stale NA region.
Big name stars such as Evil Geniuses Ethan and Gen.G’s Major winner Autimatic have both broken headlines by being tempted away by Valorant, representing the very real threat the game holds for Valve Corporation and CS:GO.
CS:GO has always been a game that has boasted some of the most passionate fanbases and jaw-dropping spectacles in the entire Esports space, and the return of a LAN studio environment at IEM Cologne represents the first step back to these sights for the community and the perfect reinvigoration for the pros inside the scene.
What cannot be denied is the fact that the success of IEM Cologne has shown the appetite and importance of LAN to the world of Esports, and that the gauntlet has been thrown down for all future tournament organisers that, restrictions or not, studio environments and audiences are badly needed go forward.
