2016 and 2017 were harsh for Valve in terms of CS:GO. Dubious decisions made the community uncertain. However, Valve finally had an year where most of their decisions related to CS:GO were positive. Not only this, but the professional scene doesn’t seem to stop growing any time soon. Without any doubts, 2019 will be a great year for CSGO. So, let’s see a preview of what is to expect from CS:GO in what will be its golden year.

Valve approach to CSGO still needs works, but it’s much better than it was in previous years

Until this year, Valve most of time kept silence on what they were planning for their games. However, 2018 saw a change in this behavior. Valve developers and representatives were constantly communicating with the community through Reddit and the CSGO Twitter account was constantly updated.

In fact, we had bigger updates almost every month in 2018; the introduction of the new Dust 2, Panorama UI and MP5-SD. Moreover, we also had the Danger Zone and CSGO turning into F2P, along multiple ban-waves to cheaters.

There’s much yet to be done though. Valve needs to sort out their plan for guns like the Negev that started earlier this year. Also, since the F2P update, the game has been plagued by cheaters in the low-level matchmaking and casual modes.

In any case, as far as game updates goes, 2019 is looking to be much better than the previous years. Valve has been constantly hearing feedback and their interest in working in CSGO has been growing steadily.

The Major Circuit is going under constant reworks leading to a better system overall

In 2018, we saw FACEIT introducing many minors, but important changes to the Major circuit. Now, ESL has picked up from what FACEIT did right and is implementing changes of their own.

What this means is that slowly, the Major circuit is becoming a better system for what should be the most prestigious tournaments of the year. Tournament organizers are showing the will to improve, and Valve is letting them to do so.

In fact, CS:GO fans are truly hyped for Katowice 2019 as its shaping to be one of the best Majors ever. We have yet to see what are the full list of changes that ESL has been planning for it, but we surely are excited to see it.

With all that in mind though, it’s important to remember that the tournament organizer picked by Valve has an important role in the organic growth of this system. This means that Valve has to take much care to pick the next Major organizer.

Astralis domination makes up for a great storyline

TACO rejoined his friends from MiBR. FaZe is searching for a capable player to help them go up in ranks. Liquid wants to break through the second place in the world. Na’Vi and Zeus want to make this a year to remember.

All those team will be eagerly fighting to take on Astralis, the current best team in the world. Starting with Katowice 2019 and forwarding, we will be seeing the most competitive scene in CS:GO history fighting, in many tournaments yet to come.

And the explosive matches won’t be restricted to those teams. North, NRG, FNATIC, BIG, G2 and others are all going full-on to take on NiP and Mousesports in a fight for the top 5 rankings.

If there’s one thing that we won’t be missing in 2019, that is explosive matches. Even MDL is looking hot with the new Virtus.Pro, Fragsters, LDLC and ENCE looking to make their way to EPL.

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An unseen regional growth thanks to FACEIT and esports organizations effort

In early CSGO years and previous iterations, France, Sweden, Russia, Ukraine and Denmark were the countries for Major talents. There often were some talents coming from other countries, but the firepower was centralized in those five countries.

Thanks to FACEIT efforts, this is drastically changing. Of course, Denmark and France are still some of the best countries as far as new talent goes, but there’s more countries in the game now.

FACEIT has been partnering with esports organization to bring regional tournaments and their competitive matchmaking system to more countries. More recently, for example, they have inaugurated their LATAM league.

Earlier 2018, Moscow and Turkey also got their own servers thanks to FACEIT efforts along EPICENTER and Space Soldiers. Overall, we’re seeing talent coming from every region as we never did before.

Asia, Eastern Europe and South America are all turning out to be strong places to search for up and coming players. This means that 2019 will be full of new faces taking up their first steps to the stardom.

An ever-growing yearly prize pool is bringing more investment for teams, players and tournaments

Since its release in 2012, CS:GO’s tournaments prize pool has been growing. This year, we saw a total of $22,545,720.96, a 17% increase compared to 2017. In fact, we had many tournaments coming from new organizers in the scene, and the same is set to happen next year.

Along with this growth, we’re also seeing that many organizations have received investments from multiple forms. Moreover, with esports itself being recognized by many important individuals, CSGO prestige is only growing too.

If 2018 was a stacked year for premier events, 2019 is only looking even more stacked. However, as we recently saw, ECS and EPL are working together to provide better scheduling to their leagues. A well-made competitive calendar will solve one of the biggest problems CSGO has been faced with so far.

Of course, this year we saw some organizations leaving CS:GO. Earlier 2018 we had the impression that there was something very bad coming for the overall scene, as a bubble that could be close to be exploding. Instead, we had the healthy growth as every year before.

2019 will be a great year for both players and viewers

CSGO doesn’t stop growing and the excitement around it is just starting. With Valve finally being more open in their social medias about their plans for the game, along with an independent competitive scene that is reaching its peak, 2019 seems to be CSGO golden year.

There’re some rough edges in all areas, but no esports model is perfect and CSGO is definitely in a path to smooth all this roughness. What do you think, though? Will 2019 be a year for both casual players and professional teams? What Valve has to do to turn this golden year in the start of a golden age? Let us know below!