Feb 3, 2020

Counter-Strike is back with a bang – or at least a series of painful crashes. Beyond the actual gameplay BLAST and co. are bringing to us, we’ve witnessed the breakdown of polite society online as the likes of ESL and Thorin have gone to war over their proposed new CS:GO leagues. In many ways, this competition will tell us more about the future of the game than anything on the servers. “B Site”: the Thorin thing You might say it’s “B Site”, but so far the majority of the attention drawn to that group has come Thorin’s way, as was clearly planned by the owners. Dan Fiden of Cloud9 did make an appearance on By The Numbers, but so far the public face of the group has been CS:GO’s own historian, and he’s wasted no time going on the offensive against ESL for the perceived injustices that have been perpetrated against some lower-tier teams.

Meanwhile, as we have mentioned, BLAST are quietly working away, like the kid at the back of the class hoping nobody will notice he’s on his Gameboy as the teacher is trying to break up the fight at the front. Last year’s pariah-in-chief are now much more favourably viewed by the community, with even perennial critics like Thorin himself now happily signed up to their Premier series. So, what is going on, and who is currently winning in the battle of the ‘new’ leagues? There is no doubt that the entire ESL-versus-B Site beef has mainly worked to the benefit of BLAST, simply due to the lack of negative headlines around their own league. It also doesn’t hurt that they are coming into 2020 with a new, LAN-based format where best-of-one matches are no longer the focus and competition is king. That said, they aren’t the only people to have done well out of the fight. BLASToff While it may seem like B Site and ESL have traded barbs, the whole argument places them in the position of ‘competitors’ to ESL and BLAST, when the reality seems a little different. For better or worse, those two focused on getting the best teams involved in their events, while the roster for B Site looked decidedly B-movie calibre based on what we know so far.