Back on February 27th, 2020, a teary-eyed Carmac announced that fans would be unable
to attend the tournament in Katowice, due to the emerging threat from covid. For him
as much as anyone, a lot must be riding on the Cologne event that’s currently underway.
Because while there still won’t be an audience, it marks the first time since the pandemic
took hold that a tournament has dared to return to LAN, as opposed to being hosted from the
safety of the internet.
The last big LAN event CS:GO had was Flashpoint, Season 1, way back in March 2020. And that
event had its later matches shifted to online in response to covid.
Covid has caused chaos! For CS:GO, it has forced some tournaments to switch to online,
and for others to be cancelled completely. Most notably, the Rio Major, which was meant
to take place last May, but which was moved to November before finally being cancelled
when it became apparent that the virus was going to remain for longer than people had
expected. Even now, it might not be the end of the virus,
but it could be the beginning of the end of the widespread disruption it has caused. We
understand the threat better than we did. We’ve all had over a year to acclimatise
to the changes that might entail. And with mass vaccinations across the world, it’s
only a matter of time before life begins returning to normal again! An event such as Cologne
2021 has been planned with covid in mind, so it will be interesting to see how they
deal with the extra problems a pandemic can cause.
I don’t think we’ll ever know the full impact this virus has had on CS:GO. The changes
to the tournaments are just the tip of the iceberg- I suspect it’s also affected player
numbers, first by increasing them when we were all stuck in lockdowns. And now it may
be working against the game, as things are finally opening up again and we’re discovering
there’s more to life than our computer screens again. But without an alternate reality where
covid didn’t happen, it’s impossible to know HOW much of an impact this has had.
Take the esports side of things, for instance. Just the other day, Tomi posted online about
how much money companies like ESL are losing from CS:GO every year. They invest the money
in the hope that the scene will become more profitable in the future. Losses were a problem
for them even before covid struck, but I can’t see how a pandemic and the cancelled events
that followed could be helping matters. This situation should be majorly concerning for
everybody who’s involved with the game. If it carries on like this then large companies
may begin pulling out of CS:GO entirely, leading to a vicious circle to the game’s popularity
and competitive scene. This would be catastrophic. I don’t think that tournaments returning
to LAN will solve this problem, but it would at least be a step in the right direction.
Because until this pandemic, LANs were the preferred way of settling which teams were
best. It’s different from playing online- the results of the matches are different!
With LAN, there’s increased pressure to playing in an unfamiliar environment, on an
unfamiliar system and teams tend to perform differently under these conditions. Also,
since it’s all done on LAN it cuts out the lag, which levels the playing field and allows
the players to perform under the best possible circumstances. It also makes it harder to
cheat. Obviously, this would be the case, since the players will be sat in a room, where
they’re being watched by third parties. That makes any kind of cheating harder. And
lastly- there’s just something about it being hosted in a physical venue that makes
the event feel ‘official’. If they can be bothered to host it for real, then I can
be bothered to watch it. Or even to attend! I’ve been there, done that. And I can attest
to the magic of it all.
And without an official, physical tournament, there have been fears that people will start
losing interest in CS:GO’s esports scene. It helps the game to have large, definitive
events a few times a year that even casual viewers can justify watching to see which
teams are deemed the current best in the world.
And IEM Cologne 2021 is a step towards that. It still has some way to go- there is no live
audience. Right now, it’s simply too risky to invite people from all over the world to
sit in an arena together. Inevitably, covid is going to spread in those sorts of circumstances.
Even without an audience, it’s a massive undertaking. Over 120 players from 20 different
countries are getting together for this tournament- as well as all of the coaches, managers and
all of the staff involved in running the tournament. ESL posted on reddit explaining how they’ve
gone about preparing for this. Somewhere, they have a 50 page document dedicated to
managing covid while keeping the players comfortable, which they’ll reassess after the first week.
The issues extend as far as ensuring that players can travel to the event without being
turned away at the border- which can prove challenging when they’re coming from far-out
places beyond the European Union like Russia and… England.
And ESL has established that this IS a LAN event. There will be no compromises on that
front: players will not be asked to jump between the crisp-clean feel of LAN play and the less
responsive feel of online servers. The players themselves are all housed up the
5 star Hyatt Regency Hotel in Cologne. I’ve been there, it’s quite nice.
Again, the reddit post on this matter details the environment the players will be living
in and the measures in place to keep everyone safe.
Upon arrival, they’ve had to quarantine for 3 days, and then to be tested multiple
times over the course of the tournament. Their freedom to move about has been restricted,
and there is to be no physical contact in the form of handshakes and so on for the first
week. Meals are provided directly to everyone’s rooms, and a zoning system will keep everybody
involved in a safe bubble. They can only leave after their involvement in the tournament
has concluded. This is all to ensure that the impact of covid
on the event is kept to a minimum. AND YET, things still go wrong.
One of team Heroic’s players tested positive for covid. And JACKZ broke his hand.
But regarding the positive case, the whole team was put into quarantine with the intention
of still participating in the tournament. But the quarantine was ended following further
tests which came back negative. Apparently, this might not have been a false positive,
but possibly residual traces left after an earlier covid infection that the player was
recovering from. AND NOW two members of Team Spirit have been
quarantined after a passenger on their flight tested positive.
The virus seems to be everywhere! But the show goes on. And all eyes will be watching
how this tournament pans out, keen to discover whether a LAN event was a good idea, with
Covid still so prevalent. And the clock is ticking: it’s just over
3 months until CS:GO’s first major since covid is scheduled to begin.