Anders Blume believes that CS:GO has a problem, but he isn't sure how big it is yet.

The latest iteration of Counter-Strike has been growing rapidly over the past few years, shattering viewership records and giving more and more top teams the financial support they need to dedicate themselves to playing the game at the highest level. But online leagues are still a major pillar of the game's financial infrastructure.

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"A lot of the online Counter-Strike that goes on is just not very appealing," he told theScore esports. "A lot of the financial model that's currently going on seems to be modeled on, sort of the online portion of the league makes the money so that the rest of the show can go on. There's very little overhead in running an online league. It's not that the people who are running it are stupid or anything, it's just that we've come to this model through different sorts of evolutions, and now that we're here, we've realized it's not as great as it maybe could be. And I think actually a lot of people realize that, I don't think I'm some sort of genius for figuring it out, in fact I didn't figure it out at all. I just talked to a bunch of people. For me personally, I want to see the best version of Counter-Strike as much as I can, but not the worst one, and I think online Counter-Strike is sort of weird, to put it mildly."

For Anders, online CS isn't really the same game. The lag is such that certain plays just aren't possible, which dilutes the game from its purest form. But it's not just the technical issues that make online CS:GO inferior to the LAN experience, it's also the environment. Players aren't in front of cheering crowds — they're at home, or in a team house or at a bootcamp, and that environment changes things a lot.

"When the teams are playing in so many big tournaments that have really massive prize pools and really a lot of prestige in winning, I'm not sure it's always about the prize money, it's about winning every tournament," he said.

"Then when you're back home in your room, or even if it's a bootcamp or something and now you're playing in some online league, you're playing best-of-one games and it's really hard for the teams to focus on what's the weight of it. It's really important that you win those online games, because that's how you qualify for the LAN section of it, which is really important. So I don't want to say that these things don't matter, but I think it's very hard for the players to keep the focus throughout a whole long stretch of online Counter-Strike and I think that's part of the reason it doesn't function so well."

That level of focus leads to better play at LAN events, Anders says, and a general sense that online tournaments aren't as impressive. For his own part, Anders has pulled back from casting a lot online events to focus on big tournaments. And it's not so much about the money as it is the quality of the games, he says. If the games are good, he can be excited with the crowd, and that makes everything even better.

"My level of excitement is proportional to the level of seriousness that I can draw out of how the players are playing, so if they seem less engaged, then even if I don't want to I will maybe be less engaged myself," he said. "To put it bluntly, I think the best version of Counter-Strike is the one that's played in a huge stadium with a big crowd, like we just had in Cologne. When I'm there and I get that excitement and everyone else I talk to says, 'This what I want Counter-Strike to be.'"

Anders points out that there's no real solution to this problem. Right now, online leagues are a necessary part of the CS:GO infrastructure, and they're what prop up the huge tournaments that show off the best of the game. The online leagues also help grow the game, which is good, but they do it in service of massive stadium events that Anders feels aren't optimized either.

A CS:GO event that's open to the public is usually three days in a stadium, and Anders says that that's a lot of commitment for people who aren't already dedicated fans. But while watching thirteen hours of Counter-Strike in a weekend isn't necessarily going to bring a complete outsider into the fold, Anders thinks it's still better for growing the game's audience than online leagues are. The crowd helps sell the game, but Anders compares it to boxing — you can appreciate CS:GO without knowing every little detail about the game.

"You could take any random person, sit them down and show them some great boxing match and they will be struck by it," he said. "Because you don't actually need that much insight to see when someone in boxing is doing something that's very cool.

"But if you start to get into it, you notice that there's a deeper level, you see how they place their feet, you can even tell from the body language how much much weight is behind a given punch. You start to see that side of it and boxing becomes a deeper sport than just who's hitting big knockouts. I think Counter-Strike is very similar in that sense, in that you show someone KennyS or GuardiaN or Coldzera, someone who is mechanically on a very high level and some of the best in the world, you don't actually need to know that much about the deeper level of Counter-Strike to appreciate that, I think. At least, that would be my argument. But then if you give it more time and learn more about it, it starts to become a bit more fleshed out and there's lots of fun little things."

But even if it's easy to get into CS:GO in theory, it's still hard in practice. It isn't just about the fact that actually attending an event and experiencing CS:GO in its best form is inaccessible to all but the most hardcore, there's also the issue that there are so many tournaments. Anders says it's great that there are enough events for the technical staff to get the experience they need to put on a great event every time, but it's not about them as much as it is about the viewers. If the crazy saturation of tournaments continues at this rate, Anders says, there could be consequences.

"It could just be like a collective viewer fatigue," he said. "I think that can happen where, let's say the viewership has nowhere else to go, and I honestly don't think there's much competition from anyone else [in] the FPS scene that can threaten Counter-Strike, but if there is going to be a threat, then if that threat pops up and it coincides with a lot of people saying, 'I watch every month, 15 hours of Counter-Strike or more, I just consume so much Counter-Strike,' then maybe that could start a viewership migration. Also, the general enjoyment, there's no way you can have 100 percent enjoyment stretched out across 30 days of content or something. At least you should be allowed to have a moment where you just say, 'I really wish I could watch this game, or watch the best matchup.' If you don't have that time, then chances are your interest is going to fade over time. That's at least one of the dangers."

For now, Anders says he doesn't really have an answer to any of these issues, but they're going to be important to think about as CS:GO grows even more. Tournament over-saturation combined with weaker play on online leagues could be theoretically sorted out if Valve stepped into the space and put a tighter reign on tournament organizers, but Anders doesn't really think that would be worth it. After all, the devil you know is usually better than the devil you don't. CS:GO is going to have to solve their problems on their own, the way they've done for the past five years.

"For one thing, one of the things the loose system of control has spawned in Counter-Strike is all this variation in tournament organizers and a lot of competition as well, and I am a fan of competition, I think it's important to help things improve and grow," he said.

"We have all of that. Something that the Dota community and maybe even more so the League of Legends community — and you're seeing it with Blizzard and Overwatch now — one thing that's always a potential issue is what if they pull out of it? What if Valve says that hosting the International isn't that fun anymore, and they'd rather do something else? What is the hit going to be like to the Dota community? I'm not saying that's going to happen, but theoretically, if you wanted to think about the worst possible scenario, that's worth thinking about."

Daniel Rosen is a news editor for theScore esports. You can follow him on Twitter.