CS:GO pros "pretty much unanimously" rejected an offer from Valve to create a version of The International for Counter-Strike, according to Jason ‘Moses’ O’Toole.

"Valve doesn’t care about CSGO" is one of those hits that just doesn’t go away, much like Slade’s Christmas masterpiece or Rick Astley’s gift to the world.

Various pundits and experts down the years have made the point that from the outside, it looks like Gaben and his goons love Dota and keep CS:GO alive for the luls, with the biggest single unifying piece of proof offered the jewel in Valve’s crown, or The International as we all know it.

Debate: TI or LoL Worlds - which is the ruler of esports events?

However, in an interview with Nicolas 'Tasteless' Plott, Moses said Valve did make the offer to have a CS:GO TI, and it was turned down by the professional scene, or at least the parts of it included in the conversation.

Speaking as a guest on the November 25th episode of The Tasteless Podcast, Moses said: "We've had a couple of conversations with them (Valve), especially earlier on in Counter-Strike. We were asked if we wanted an International. And pretty much unanimously the pros and people involved in CS esports said 'no'.

"Who knows? That could have been a mistake. They do things pretty differently. Dota has way more devs, I think three or four times as many devs as Counter-Strike and that fluctuates based off the way Valve operates as a company.

"We have different ecosystems, different people working on the games and different philosophies on how to achive, I guess, a similar goal."

Eco-round

With Moses’ reputation as one of the elite CS:GO talents and all-around decent human in mind, its unlikely he’d lie about the decision, but why would players say no to something that generates so much cash?

Well, the biggest problem with TI can be seen in Dota already, which is where you’d expect to see it…anyway, the fact is that the event sits on the Dota calendar like a bowling ball on a meringue, distorting and to some extent destroying everything around it.

Sure, TNC’s Major victory was a big moment for them, but when OG won TI last year the dominance Secret had demonstrated over the regular seasons was largely forgotten as people fell over themselves to proclaim n0tail and co the greatest ever.

Does TI help or hurt Dota?

There are other reasons CS:GO might enjoy not being more like Dota, when you consider we get twice as many main events, and the CS scene is in a more functional place than Dota from some angles. The fact third parties can also host the Major is a big boon and encourages companies to come into CS too, when compared with Dota where the biggest show will always have a Valve stamp on it.

There are still aspects of TI that many CS:GO fans would love to see brought over, not least crowd-funding the prize pools, but it may be that Valve are not comfortable offering that as an option for third party events, and it would be attached to the single-crown-jewel system a CS:GOTI would bring.

Latest tournament: ECS Season 8 Finals schedule

Certainly, when you consider how many TOs in both the Dota and CS:GO circuit operate it would make a lot of sense for Valve to tread carefully before handing them the tools to milk the fansbase directly.

Hopefully, this at least ends the conversation about why Valve don’t do a CS:GO International, even if many questions will remain for fans of the greatest FPS.

The fact players themselves turned it down also shows that the people closest to the professional scene believe the current system is better than what Dota have, and for any changes to succeed Valve would need the players to buy in, so in some ways the answer to the question precludes the topic from coming up again in the near future, at least when it comes to the official channels.