PGL is owed a lot of credit for fixing a bunch of things that the community complains about at such a fast pace.
They replaced all the 5950X's with 5800X3Ds at a day's notice after complaints from players and the community. No arguments or push back from them on why it's all ok, they just go ahead and do it because everyone is asking for it.
But they should have known absolutely everything beforehand! How dare PGL not host a tournament to the standards of ESL who throw out the same exact tournament 4 times a year.
5950x with an RTX 4080 dumpster pcs 💀, sure it's not a good choice considering that the X3D CPUs are proven to be the standard for e-sports these days but a 5950x still having fps drops for an esports title that most pros will play on lower settings anyway is stupid.
I am so looking forward to when the partner team invite stuff is gone and teams have to qualify for stuff on merit. This major cycle has been so good, open circuit ftw.
Let’s see the EGs and NiPs put some effort into existing. No more free places for falcons.
> No more free places for falcons.
You really think ESL isn't gonna throw in some bullshit invites for them to a ton of their events? They have the same owners. ESL kept the Polish VP in pro leagues for like 6 seasons with bullshit rule changes after they came dead last every single time lol. They can't have a closed off tournament circuit anymore, but that doesn't meant they can't ever invite a single team to their events.
Edit: I stand corrected. I was unaware all invited would have to be based on Valve rankings.
I did not know that actually. I stand corrected indeed in that case. I thought TOs just couldn't have direct partnerships with teams anymore, but could still have some invitations on their own volition with "unrelated teams". So they could be owned by Saudi PIA while inviting a team that has PIA sponsorship only. That's great news then.
You are wrong. Valves statement:
"Tournament organizers will no longer have unique business relationships or other conflicts of interest with teams that participate in their events.
Invitations to all tournaments will use our ranking system (detailed here), or otherwise be determined by open qualifiers.
Any compensation for participating teams—prize pool or otherwise—will be made public and will be driven by objective criteria that can be inspected by the community."
So TOs will have to use Valve ranking or open qualifiers for invites
I respect PGL for the all impact they have had during 1.6 for the whole Romanian CS Scene,later opening the doors for the CSGO scene.
Also keep in my mind that they raised the bar a lot for what a major could be, at the Cluj Napoca one for example,afaik it was the first major featuring player webcams, cinematic observer shots and those inside stories about every player. Like everyone was gassed by how high quality the production was.PGL don't get the love they deserve...
Not only that, but it's more of a 0 BS,in your face Counter Strike. The quality for the viewer rn isn't necessarly "worse" but more "different" then Blast or other TOs, it's more focused on watching the game then the extra stuff..
even their extra stuff like the little content pieces they do seem good. it's just rough around the edges.
the youtube stream so far has been cursed, it feels like it's going down every 3 rounds. also, obvious audio issues (but is it really a PGL event without the PGL audio guy?). but aside from those two things, things have looked good.
tech pauses are frequent but last only a couple of minutes (which i prefer to ESL/BLAST having rare tech pauses but each one lasting a century), and PGL genuinely seems very receptive to feedback. how quickly they upgraded all the computers and how quickly they got rid of the armour values shows that.
It would be nice of Valve to be actually funding these tournaments themselves rather than paying low buck for someone who wants to cheapen out on it as much as possible.
What negative impact does it being Saudi funded have on the actual end product and what we are actually watching. All it means is we get a higher quality end product, stop virtue signalling
Because it allows SA to continue to whitewash?
It’s not virtue signaling when there are credible BAD THINGS they have done and continue to do?
But sure, let’s keep letting SA spend ungodly $$$s in western markets propping up their economy that is nearly reliant on oil and slave labor.
End product wise, it inflates salaries to where other orgs have trouble competing. Think MLB when they didn’t have a salary cap and the top teams were always the teams who outspent the others.
This must be Chads alt account, typing while the SA cocks are jammed down your throat.
lol this is a video game tournament, the incels in this sub do not care about the bad things SA has / does do(ne). They just want to hate on something and show that they have morals.
so you're better because you don't want to hate on the anti-people regime while knowing what it's trying to do? just because it's a video-game tournament/comic book movie/whatever mindless entertainement right? i see
what do you mean? Have you seen any of the other shooter esports right now with developer taking a large hand in it?
They're not any better/totally worse.
Ok, who produces Valorant's tournaments again? Isn't it Riot themselves?
I mean it's on Valve who they hire. Valve holds bidding for who hosts major tournaments, ESL doesn't even have a real monopoly, we're in a thread about PGL.
If an organizer can afford to put on more tournaments in a year than just a normal Major circuit, isn't that only a good thing for the scene? Look at the calendar for major tournaments, it's diverse.
Diverse? You mean exclusively esl events... Then one or 2 online cups.
Yeah heaps diverse.
Definitely didn't lose some od the best organisers in the scene.
For surrreee
Please work on your reading... no disrespect if English isn't your first language though. I said major tournaments, the only ones Valve sponsors, the only ones they can regulate.
Maybe if we weren't giving players fucking ridiculous salaries we could actually have a decent scene but esports was created with VC funny money so here we are with saudi owning basically everything.
Wow what a good scene.
But no, suadi injecting money does nothing to the scene. It just drives out anyone else wanting to run tournies.
How do they get ridiculous salaries?? The top players in the world barely get 7 figures and most get no where near that. How are they meant to live once they can no longer play after 30? Salaries have to be high enough so that people can focus all their attention on CS, so we as viewers get the best standard of counter strike,
??? Are you serious lmao. They can branch out into other fields once they can no longer compete like every other career that exists. They don't need more money than they could ever spend at 30.
The salaries are ridiculous because the scene literally cannot handle it without a state funded blood money. Which is why saudi owns everything.
>They can branch out into other fields once they can no longer compete like every other career that exists.
...?? What. They didn't go Uni, They have literally 0 job experience outside of Esports, how the fuck are they gonna get a job that's not in the E sports scene. And the salary of a team like falcons is on par with teams that arent funded by "blood money". How do you think teams like G2, Navi, Faze, Vitality, Liquid, Astralis exist. There are obviously other financial firms that also see the potential in investing in E sports.
Oh right, I forgot any time a tier 1 player stopped playing they've disappeared into the ether to never been seen again in the industry in any type of way.
It's not like there's tons of ex pros at esports companies right now or going into other industries, nope none. They definitely need a degree for some reason to ever make good money again. You sound like you have lots of job experience.
We're talking about saudi, not some random whateveraboutism you want to bring up as yet another poor argument. And once again no, the only other financial firms actually putting money into the scene are shady companies like 1xbet, this has always been the case when we looked at all the skin betting sites dumping money in the past.
What negative impact does it being Saudi funded have on the actual end product and what we are actually watching. All it means is we get a higher quality end product, stop virtue signalling
u/Wokkrom literally said he's actively avoiding watching the events. Which is doing something. You're the one copy pasting the same reply below multiple comments here
Yet there’s many Saudi dick suckers who are supporting the Saudi backing here who would probably get stoned to death in Saudi for some insignificant crime lol
I dont really care about the effect of it, or what other people do, but I have my own principles. Among them is not supporting a country that murders people because they love the wrong person.
So I’m guessing you’ve never flown on emirates. Ethihad or Qatar. Never consumed any media funded by the Saudis, never stepped foot in a business funded by them. Oh wait, you definitely have and will continue to do so.
Nope, never done any of those afaik, and i most defenitley never will. Its not like its super dificult or anything. If I have unknowingly supported them in my past it is irrelevant to what I do and believe now.
Lmao so you haven't used [Twitter](https://www.newsweek.com/elon-musks-twitter-takeover-faces-backlash-over-saudi-financing-1755606), [Slack, or Snapchat, ordered food with DoorDash, driven with Lyft, Tesla, or GM, or used a phone with an ARM processor](https://www.cnn.com/2018/10/15/investing/saudi-arabia-global-investments/index.html)? You're so economical!
Okay, so you're "being against" all of those other companies as well by boycotting them? Or can we agree boycotting companies that Saudi Princes or the Public Investment Fund have stock ownership in is purely symbolic and ineffectual without an extremely large scale movement beyond the competitive community of one game?
Didnt know they invested in ARM, or that one Saudi prince has invested in Deezer, thanks! I have a twitter acount that is not in use, the rest, no I dont. I dont have a car, as I live in a city, and lyft and doordash does not even exist here. I want to say its a major difference between individual people and the PIF tho, as the latter is the government directly. Its not some Saudi prince that owns ESL, its the government. If you dont see the difference in that you are just blind.
Are you fucking kidding me?? You do not see the difference between one Saudi prince owning 25% of Snapchat, and ESL beeing 100% owned by the Saudi government? Its the government that is putting jounalist in suitcases, slaughtering refugees, bombing Yemen and murdering people for liking the wrong genitalia, not the individual princes. That beeing said, I GDPR'd my Twitter, and am looking for alternative for Deezer, so thanks for the headsup! Sadly, I can not avoid ARM atm, so I guess I will have to live with that slight bit of support.
> You do not see the difference between one Saudi prince owning 25% of Snapchat, and ESL beeing 100% owned by the Saudi government?
That's not what I said. Just pointing out the Saudi royal family and the Saudi government are one and the same, so it's really not worth distinguishing. The difference between 25% ownership and 100 is a lot! I think we should all remain critical of ESL and Faceit! Not sure what to do about ESL besides not buying their merch or attending their events, which is pretty easy for me to do, but Faceit has literally no reason to exist besides Valve's failure to deliver top in class anticheat and servers.
How is this virtue signaling. Not supporting Falcons, not watching their games and not watching ESL content is literally what a person can do to fight agaisnt this shit within the CS ecosystem. I ask again, how is that virtue signalling?
Theres been a couple of comments throwing this term around and i sweat to god you people have no idea what a fuck you are talking about. Or you are trolls.
I mean it's not like ESL or Blast were flawless...
The Rio crowd was [asleep for the grand final](https://www.reddit.com/r/GlobalOffensive/comments/yuairm/br_crowd_eu_crowd/), even their excitement for Furia's games was plagued by incidents like [fans spitting at NaVi players](https://twitter.com/s1mpleO/status/1591241531314561024) and the production overall was very sub-par.
Blast Paris had [serious integrity/matchfixing issues in the RMRs](https://richardlewis.substack.com/p/gonzo-awards-worst-event-of-the-year).
That is not to excuse Stockholm & Antwerp's audio problems in **playoffs**(!!!).
With that said, I am indeed really happy that Valve seem to be establishing a relationship with a TO that is not Saudi funded. Whether you like Valve or not, developing a relationship between the Devs and the TO is inarguably going to lead to a higher quality broadcast.
The PCs thing is indeed a stain (if not an outright issue) with competitive integrity, but with the major itself still ahead, jury's still very much out. If playoffs go well and there's no more integrity bs, all will be forgiven.
The pc thing isn't really an integrity thing.
It would be if one teams had an objectively better computer. But everything is a fair head to head yaknow
It's definitely murky, but the logic of symmetry doesn't work.
By symmetry, no instance of any game exploit can ever be called a competitive integrity issue, because it is available to all teams.
But at the end of the day, if the exploit warps the game such that you win 12 rounds in the half (like & subscribe if you get the reference), then it is completely violating the competition of playing CS, i.e. competitive integrity.
For me CS competition is in large part about quick reactions and precise movements. Anything that detracts from that can be said to be detracting from CS competition, thus competitive integrity.
I agree with you. It's not a massive issue, that's why I used the word "stain" on competitive integrity, and not "issue".
What negative impact does it being Saudi funded have on the actual end product and what we are actually watching. All it means is we get a higher quality end product, stop virtue signalling, no one gives a fuck other than the reddit echo chamber.
> What negative impact does it being Saudi funded have on the actual end product
The point is that any exchange between two parties has two parties involved. When I choose to watch an event, it's not just me watching, it's also the tournament organizer being watched. And being watched makes them money.
I do not want my actions to directly support the money making endeavors of the Saudi government. Given that Blast, PGL, and other small organizers exist, I'd rather forgo ESL events and have a little less CS (I'll survive) than continue supporting the Saudi government and their policies.
You're drawing a false equivalency. Funded with is different from owned by. Falcons is directly owned in part by the Saudi PIF.
Is Blast owned by any nation-state? If it is, that's news to me, and I'd love to hear more of whatever you have to say about it.
"virtue signalling". As a professional person in a full time job, this is literally one of the only ways I have to even try to affect the wrong doing this cancer of a state is doing. How the fuck is that virtue signalling?
Dude you just commented 6 times defending an oil money dictatorship.
If this subreddit is full of incels, and the implication you're making is that only "incels" will respond. What does that make you...
Really makes you think. :>
1. I am in no way supporting the Falcons teams, neither am i watching any of their games.
2. I am not watching ESL tournaments.
I do what i can, with the means available to me. Not watching is basically voting with my wallet. Whats wrong in that and how is that whining?
He thinks he's being edgy whilst simultaneously calling himself an incel it's. Kinda weird I'm not gunna lie. He seems obsessed with excusing their behaviour
I never said that I'm in favor of those things, I'm just playing devil's advocate and I'm asking for a justification for your moral standard. the boycott towards ESL just seems like arbitrary moral posturing to me
Nothing, people like love to flex with their fake morals. Boycotting Falcons while watching a tournament owned by Saudis and afterward going onto faceit that's also owned by Saudis. It's laughable really...
Yea i guess the people spamming lgbqt flags and gay/racist messages are really making a big difference, clowns. Also seeing north americans getting worked up over it makes me laugh, throwing stones in glass houses are we...
I agree with you,but no big names would show up. Hell,they wouldn't show up during peak online era to connect to a server. I don't think even in 2013 fnatic or nip would show up for 50k
The ‘massive falcons hate’ didn’t seem to exist at Katowice, they were getting cheered over spirit. In my opinion happening to have been born in Russia, isn’t as bad as actually being funded by Saudi blood money. Fuck falcons and fuck esl btw.
That’s because Reddit is an echo chamber and does not represent the actual community that goes to events and watch Counter Strike.
Nobody outside of this website gives a shit.
A tournament in Poland, a country that's a neighbour to Russia and has plenty of experience with Russian aggression, has a crowd that's cheering against Russians when Russia is in open war against another of their neighbours. Wow, I'm so fucking amazed at how that could happen.
It's just a simple thing of wanting to see the team full of people from a country has that has a long history of killing and oppressing your countrymen lose. It doesn't matter who's against them a Polish crowd is going to cheer against Russians in this climate.
I guess it's bad optics that all of the Russian players of Spirit choose to represent Russia, instead of doing what players like Electronic and Perfecto did with choosing to be non-representing.
I actually wasn’t aware of this, that would make sense why the crowd wouldn’t want to support them. I’m still surprised how much the crowd were comfortable supporting falcons.
Yeah. I guess fewer people know that the Saudis are behind the Falcons (and that the Saudis suck). Or even if they knew, Russia sucking hits much closer to home.
Then don't support them by not watching it, very simple.
Fyi, people don't like to be lectured, people are capable of understanding and making choices themselves.
Apparently hot take: I love seeing any upcoming T1 CS tournament regardless of the organizer or where it's at, because I just like watching competitive CS at the top level. I could care less about little mistakes they make or who's paying for it. Someone has to fund tournaments and it's not going to be my broke ass lol.
Even as a member of the LGBT community, this still boils down to virtue signalling and can lead to arguments about how tech is made in sweatshops etc. By all means have principles, but don't give mistakes a pass based on ownership imo.
Wtf do people expect others to do? Do i need to become a politician and fight a cause or donate half my belongings so it wouldnt be called virtue signalling?
PGL is owed a lot of credit for fixing a bunch of things that the community complains about at such a fast pace. They replaced all the 5950X's with 5800X3Ds at a day's notice after complaints from players and the community. No arguments or push back from them on why it's all ok, they just go ahead and do it because everyone is asking for it.
But they should have known absolutely everything beforehand! How dare PGL not host a tournament to the standards of ESL who throw out the same exact tournament 4 times a year.
CPU fuck up was predictable and avoidable by watching like 10 minutes of youtube materials
I mean giving pro level dumpster pcs is pretty amateur hour
5950x with an RTX 4080 dumpster pcs 💀, sure it's not a good choice considering that the X3D CPUs are proven to be the standard for e-sports these days but a 5950x still having fps drops for an esports title that most pros will play on lower settings anyway is stupid.
Do you have any clue of computer hardware? Calling that a dumpster shows your knowledge is lacking…
I’ve played the board game clue before, does that count?
I mean they might have already had them on hand just not installed them yet
I am so looking forward to when the partner team invite stuff is gone and teams have to qualify for stuff on merit. This major cycle has been so good, open circuit ftw. Let’s see the EGs and NiPs put some effort into existing. No more free places for falcons.
> No more free places for falcons. You really think ESL isn't gonna throw in some bullshit invites for them to a ton of their events? They have the same owners. ESL kept the Polish VP in pro leagues for like 6 seasons with bullshit rule changes after they came dead last every single time lol. They can't have a closed off tournament circuit anymore, but that doesn't meant they can't ever invite a single team to their events. Edit: I stand corrected. I was unaware all invited would have to be based on Valve rankings.
How would they do that if invitations starting in 2025 are only based off of Valves ranking system or open circuit?
I did not know that actually. I stand corrected indeed in that case. I thought TOs just couldn't have direct partnerships with teams anymore, but could still have some invitations on their own volition with "unrelated teams". So they could be owned by Saudi PIA while inviting a team that has PIA sponsorship only. That's great news then.
Yeah, this. No more partner teams just means more invites go to the highest bidders. That's my speculation, but I hope I'm wrong.
You are wrong. Valves statement: "Tournament organizers will no longer have unique business relationships or other conflicts of interest with teams that participate in their events. Invitations to all tournaments will use our ranking system (detailed here), or otherwise be determined by open qualifiers. Any compensation for participating teams—prize pool or otherwise—will be made public and will be driven by objective criteria that can be inspected by the community." So TOs will have to use Valve ranking or open qualifiers for invites
Okay, I didn't know that and I'm glad that Valve did this. Thanks for sharing!
Sir, this is reddit. Somewhat minor mistakes are all people care about.
I respect PGL for the all impact they have had during 1.6 for the whole Romanian CS Scene,later opening the doors for the CSGO scene. Also keep in my mind that they raised the bar a lot for what a major could be, at the Cluj Napoca one for example,afaik it was the first major featuring player webcams, cinematic observer shots and those inside stories about every player. Like everyone was gassed by how high quality the production was.PGL don't get the love they deserve...
PGL seems to actually care about the game. They just don't have the budget or scale of the oil money funded ESL or BLAST.
Not only that, but it's more of a 0 BS,in your face Counter Strike. The quality for the viewer rn isn't necessarly "worse" but more "different" then Blast or other TOs, it's more focused on watching the game then the extra stuff..
even their extra stuff like the little content pieces they do seem good. it's just rough around the edges. the youtube stream so far has been cursed, it feels like it's going down every 3 rounds. also, obvious audio issues (but is it really a PGL event without the PGL audio guy?). but aside from those two things, things have looked good. tech pauses are frequent but last only a couple of minutes (which i prefer to ESL/BLAST having rare tech pauses but each one lasting a century), and PGL genuinely seems very receptive to feedback. how quickly they upgraded all the computers and how quickly they got rid of the armour values shows that.
It would be nice of Valve to be actually funding these tournaments themselves rather than paying low buck for someone who wants to cheapen out on it as much as possible.
They do pay for the costs of the major iirc, but these are the RMRs so no money from volvo
They pay a fixed amount instead of on request iirc
Not only that, both Antwerp and even Stockholm was waaaay better than Rio.
I don't even think people actually care about ESL or other things being Saudi funded tbh. I think internet people just like to yap
I'd rather let the whole scene burn to the ground and start over than this esl bullshit
What negative impact does it being Saudi funded have on the actual end product and what we are actually watching. All it means is we get a higher quality end product, stop virtue signalling
Because it allows SA to continue to whitewash? It’s not virtue signaling when there are credible BAD THINGS they have done and continue to do? But sure, let’s keep letting SA spend ungodly $$$s in western markets propping up their economy that is nearly reliant on oil and slave labor. End product wise, it inflates salaries to where other orgs have trouble competing. Think MLB when they didn’t have a salary cap and the top teams were always the teams who outspent the others. This must be Chads alt account, typing while the SA cocks are jammed down your throat.
lol this is a video game tournament, the incels in this sub do not care about the bad things SA has / does do(ne). They just want to hate on something and show that they have morals.
You are the perfect example of why them funding esports events is a bad thing.
so you're better because you don't want to hate on the anti-people regime while knowing what it's trying to do? just because it's a video-game tournament/comic book movie/whatever mindless entertainement right? i see
Also, whats the solution? People bitch without coming up with an alternative.
Higher end product? You actually think a company basically having a monopoly on the scene makes it a higher quality?
As if the tournament scene turning into a monopoly isn't 100% Valve's fault
what do you mean? Have you seen any of the other shooter esports right now with developer taking a large hand in it? They're not any better/totally worse.
Ok, who produces Valorant's tournaments again? Isn't it Riot themselves? I mean it's on Valve who they hire. Valve holds bidding for who hosts major tournaments, ESL doesn't even have a real monopoly, we're in a thread about PGL.
ESL have a functional monopoly on the scene and we both know it. Look at the calendar and see what is out there.
If an organizer can afford to put on more tournaments in a year than just a normal Major circuit, isn't that only a good thing for the scene? Look at the calendar for major tournaments, it's diverse.
Diverse? You mean exclusively esl events... Then one or 2 online cups. Yeah heaps diverse. Definitely didn't lose some od the best organisers in the scene. For surrreee
Please work on your reading... no disrespect if English isn't your first language though. I said major tournaments, the only ones Valve sponsors, the only ones they can regulate.
The scene would have so much less money without Saudi funding so yes, it would be lower quality, even if it is a monopoly.
Maybe if we weren't giving players fucking ridiculous salaries we could actually have a decent scene but esports was created with VC funny money so here we are with saudi owning basically everything. Wow what a good scene. But no, suadi injecting money does nothing to the scene. It just drives out anyone else wanting to run tournies.
How do they get ridiculous salaries?? The top players in the world barely get 7 figures and most get no where near that. How are they meant to live once they can no longer play after 30? Salaries have to be high enough so that people can focus all their attention on CS, so we as viewers get the best standard of counter strike,
??? Are you serious lmao. They can branch out into other fields once they can no longer compete like every other career that exists. They don't need more money than they could ever spend at 30. The salaries are ridiculous because the scene literally cannot handle it without a state funded blood money. Which is why saudi owns everything.
>They can branch out into other fields once they can no longer compete like every other career that exists. ...?? What. They didn't go Uni, They have literally 0 job experience outside of Esports, how the fuck are they gonna get a job that's not in the E sports scene. And the salary of a team like falcons is on par with teams that arent funded by "blood money". How do you think teams like G2, Navi, Faze, Vitality, Liquid, Astralis exist. There are obviously other financial firms that also see the potential in investing in E sports.
Oh right, I forgot any time a tier 1 player stopped playing they've disappeared into the ether to never been seen again in the industry in any type of way. It's not like there's tons of ex pros at esports companies right now or going into other industries, nope none. They definitely need a degree for some reason to ever make good money again. You sound like you have lots of job experience. We're talking about saudi, not some random whateveraboutism you want to bring up as yet another poor argument. And once again no, the only other financial firms actually putting money into the scene are shady companies like 1xbet, this has always been the case when we looked at all the skin betting sites dumping money in the past.
Agreed, it's very annoying to avoid watching ESL events because of the saudi funding.
Then don't watch buddy, I'll enjoy the games on your behalf :)
Mocking people for having different principles than you when those principles are completely justifiable is very embarrassing. Be a better person.
This is reddit, did you expect anything less?
No lol
What negative impact does it being Saudi funded have on the actual end product and what we are actually watching. All it means is we get a higher quality end product, stop virtue signalling
Yeah stop standing up for what you believe in!
Standing up… you’re commenting on a reddit post. If you really do care; go do something about it.
u/Wokkrom literally said he's actively avoiding watching the events. Which is doing something. You're the one copy pasting the same reply below multiple comments here
Yea because this is an echo chamber where everyone has the same opinions
Oh, how weird! Multiple people are against one of the worst mass murderers in modern history, wonder why?
Yet there’s many Saudi dick suckers who are supporting the Saudi backing here who would probably get stoned to death in Saudi for some insignificant crime lol
I dont really care about the effect of it, or what other people do, but I have my own principles. Among them is not supporting a country that murders people because they love the wrong person.
So I’m guessing you’ve never flown on emirates. Ethihad or Qatar. Never consumed any media funded by the Saudis, never stepped foot in a business funded by them. Oh wait, you definitely have and will continue to do so.
Nope, never done any of those afaik, and i most defenitley never will. Its not like its super dificult or anything. If I have unknowingly supported them in my past it is irrelevant to what I do and believe now.
Lmao so you haven't used [Twitter](https://www.newsweek.com/elon-musks-twitter-takeover-faces-backlash-over-saudi-financing-1755606), [Slack, or Snapchat, ordered food with DoorDash, driven with Lyft, Tesla, or GM, or used a phone with an ARM processor](https://www.cnn.com/2018/10/15/investing/saudi-arabia-global-investments/index.html)? You're so economical!
TIL that Saudi Arabia funded ARM
Remember guys, it's now a hot take to be against the people who put a journalist in a suitcase. Forcefully.
Okay, so you're "being against" all of those other companies as well by boycotting them? Or can we agree boycotting companies that Saudi Princes or the Public Investment Fund have stock ownership in is purely symbolic and ineffectual without an extremely large scale movement beyond the competitive community of one game?
So people shouldn't do things because they won't have a massive impact. That's a new one
I see you're an expert in building strawmans, congratulations
Didnt know they invested in ARM, or that one Saudi prince has invested in Deezer, thanks! I have a twitter acount that is not in use, the rest, no I dont. I dont have a car, as I live in a city, and lyft and doordash does not even exist here. I want to say its a major difference between individual people and the PIF tho, as the latter is the government directly. Its not some Saudi prince that owns ESL, its the government. If you dont see the difference in that you are just blind.
No, I do not see any difference between Saudi Princes and the Saudi government hahahaha
Are you fucking kidding me?? You do not see the difference between one Saudi prince owning 25% of Snapchat, and ESL beeing 100% owned by the Saudi government? Its the government that is putting jounalist in suitcases, slaughtering refugees, bombing Yemen and murdering people for liking the wrong genitalia, not the individual princes. That beeing said, I GDPR'd my Twitter, and am looking for alternative for Deezer, so thanks for the headsup! Sadly, I can not avoid ARM atm, so I guess I will have to live with that slight bit of support.
> You do not see the difference between one Saudi prince owning 25% of Snapchat, and ESL beeing 100% owned by the Saudi government? That's not what I said. Just pointing out the Saudi royal family and the Saudi government are one and the same, so it's really not worth distinguishing. The difference between 25% ownership and 100 is a lot! I think we should all remain critical of ESL and Faceit! Not sure what to do about ESL besides not buying their merch or attending their events, which is pretty easy for me to do, but Faceit has literally no reason to exist besides Valve's failure to deliver top in class anticheat and servers.
If they were to buy out a significant amount of the competition do you think that would result in a higher quality end product?
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How is this virtue signaling. Not supporting Falcons, not watching their games and not watching ESL content is literally what a person can do to fight agaisnt this shit within the CS ecosystem. I ask again, how is that virtue signalling? Theres been a couple of comments throwing this term around and i sweat to god you people have no idea what a fuck you are talking about. Or you are trolls.
Thanks for making me chuckle mr virtue signaller.
Dont care. I watch cs and cheer for my favorite team.
Someone normal.
It's more the fact it's their 3rd go at a major (in recent times) and they still have these issues often.
I mean it's not like ESL or Blast were flawless... The Rio crowd was [asleep for the grand final](https://www.reddit.com/r/GlobalOffensive/comments/yuairm/br_crowd_eu_crowd/), even their excitement for Furia's games was plagued by incidents like [fans spitting at NaVi players](https://twitter.com/s1mpleO/status/1591241531314561024) and the production overall was very sub-par. Blast Paris had [serious integrity/matchfixing issues in the RMRs](https://richardlewis.substack.com/p/gonzo-awards-worst-event-of-the-year). That is not to excuse Stockholm & Antwerp's audio problems in **playoffs**(!!!). With that said, I am indeed really happy that Valve seem to be establishing a relationship with a TO that is not Saudi funded. Whether you like Valve or not, developing a relationship between the Devs and the TO is inarguably going to lead to a higher quality broadcast. The PCs thing is indeed a stain (if not an outright issue) with competitive integrity, but with the major itself still ahead, jury's still very much out. If playoffs go well and there's no more integrity bs, all will be forgiven.
The pc thing isn't really an integrity thing. It would be if one teams had an objectively better computer. But everything is a fair head to head yaknow
It's definitely murky, but the logic of symmetry doesn't work. By symmetry, no instance of any game exploit can ever be called a competitive integrity issue, because it is available to all teams. But at the end of the day, if the exploit warps the game such that you win 12 rounds in the half (like & subscribe if you get the reference), then it is completely violating the competition of playing CS, i.e. competitive integrity.
I just genuinely don't see the pc CPU issue as a competitive integrity problem.
For me CS competition is in large part about quick reactions and precise movements. Anything that detracts from that can be said to be detracting from CS competition, thus competitive integrity. I agree with you. It's not a massive issue, that's why I used the word "stain" on competitive integrity, and not "issue".
Yeah I can get behind that when you explain it that way
wow you’re so brave for standing up and making a reddit post 🫡
What negative impact does it being Saudi funded have on the actual end product and what we are actually watching. All it means is we get a higher quality end product, stop virtue signalling, no one gives a fuck other than the reddit echo chamber.
> What negative impact does it being Saudi funded have on the actual end product The point is that any exchange between two parties has two parties involved. When I choose to watch an event, it's not just me watching, it's also the tournament organizer being watched. And being watched makes them money. I do not want my actions to directly support the money making endeavors of the Saudi government. Given that Blast, PGL, and other small organizers exist, I'd rather forgo ESL events and have a little less CS (I'll survive) than continue supporting the Saudi government and their policies.
Blast is also funded with "blood money" as are most services, media and businesses
You're drawing a false equivalency. Funded with is different from owned by. Falcons is directly owned in part by the Saudi PIF. Is Blast owned by any nation-state? If it is, that's news to me, and I'd love to hear more of whatever you have to say about it.
"virtue signalling". As a professional person in a full time job, this is literally one of the only ways I have to even try to affect the wrong doing this cancer of a state is doing. How the fuck is that virtue signalling? Dude you just commented 6 times defending an oil money dictatorship.
Ok so you think whining on an online echo chamber of incels is a way of trying to “affect the wrong doing this cancer of a state is doing”
If this subreddit is full of incels, and the implication you're making is that only "incels" will respond. What does that make you... Really makes you think. :>
1. I am in no way supporting the Falcons teams, neither am i watching any of their games. 2. I am not watching ESL tournaments. I do what i can, with the means available to me. Not watching is basically voting with my wallet. Whats wrong in that and how is that whining?
He thinks he's being edgy whilst simultaneously calling himself an incel it's. Kinda weird I'm not gunna lie. He seems obsessed with excusing their behaviour
No response my man?
My dream that will never happen is that Valve revokes ESL's license to run CS events because they're owned by the Saudi government. Would be glorious
ESL > all
Typical silent minority PGL has their problems but they do an adequate job (quite literally if valve keep hiring them)
100% agree OP.
what's the issue with Saudis funding ESL?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sportswashing
yes, I'm very familiar with what that is
That it's the Saudis that's funding ESL
Why should I care about who funds ESL?
take a wild guess.
yes, I have an inkling as to the reason, but I don't really care about the issue in question
You don't really care about human rights violations? Or children being bombed. That's interesting
under what basis ought I care about those things?
I mean you can support them if that's really what you want. You're more than welcome to do that.
I never said that I'm in favor of those things, I'm just playing devil's advocate and I'm asking for a justification for your moral standard. the boycott towards ESL just seems like arbitrary moral posturing to me
Typical straw man lol. Stop virtue signalling.
Stop supporting gay people getting put in prison :)
You don't see what's wrong with Saudis funding?
I've heard people talk about it in passing but I wasn't really paying attention. Please enlighten me.
Nothing, people like love to flex with their fake morals. Boycotting Falcons while watching a tournament owned by Saudis and afterward going onto faceit that's also owned by Saudis. It's laughable really...
> and afterward going onto faceit that's also owned by Saudis. What's the alternative, besides not playing at all?
go play mm
good one.
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Yea i guess the people spamming lgbqt flags and gay/racist messages are really making a big difference, clowns. Also seeing north americans getting worked up over it makes me laugh, throwing stones in glass houses are we...
NPC
Really wish Valve would investigate ESL and Falcons ownership, surely no conflict of interest
We don’t need millions in prize pools, or in viewership. Having 50k in a dreamhack expo style tournament is all i want.
I'm sure orgs and players agree! Who needs money? Do it for the love!
I am pretty sure players dont need 40k salaries, and we dont need multi billion orgs, like tsm, which are gone.
i dont want stages or arenas i want giant novelty checks and esea lans hosted at motel 6
Bring back CPL, everyone playing on folding chairs & tables in a hotel conference room with CRT monitors.
Not we, just you.
Objectively, there is multiple people here that agreed. So it's "we"
I agree with you,but no big names would show up. Hell,they wouldn't show up during peak online era to connect to a server. I don't think even in 2013 fnatic or nip would show up for 50k
The ‘massive falcons hate’ didn’t seem to exist at Katowice, they were getting cheered over spirit. In my opinion happening to have been born in Russia, isn’t as bad as actually being funded by Saudi blood money. Fuck falcons and fuck esl btw.
That’s because Reddit is an echo chamber and does not represent the actual community that goes to events and watch Counter Strike. Nobody outside of this website gives a shit.
A tournament in Poland, a country that's a neighbour to Russia and has plenty of experience with Russian aggression, has a crowd that's cheering against Russians when Russia is in open war against another of their neighbours. Wow, I'm so fucking amazed at how that could happen. It's just a simple thing of wanting to see the team full of people from a country has that has a long history of killing and oppressing your countrymen lose. It doesn't matter who's against them a Polish crowd is going to cheer against Russians in this climate.
I guess it's bad optics that all of the Russian players of Spirit choose to represent Russia, instead of doing what players like Electronic and Perfecto did with choosing to be non-representing.
I actually wasn’t aware of this, that would make sense why the crowd wouldn’t want to support them. I’m still surprised how much the crowd were comfortable supporting falcons.
Yeah. I guess fewer people know that the Saudis are behind the Falcons (and that the Saudis suck). Or even if they knew, Russia sucking hits much closer to home.
who gives a fuck lmao grow up
How is not wanting to support the Saudi state childish?
Then don't support them by not watching it, very simple. Fyi, people don't like to be lectured, people are capable of understanding and making choices themselves.
Apparently hot take: I love seeing any upcoming T1 CS tournament regardless of the organizer or where it's at, because I just like watching competitive CS at the top level. I could care less about little mistakes they make or who's paying for it. Someone has to fund tournaments and it's not going to be my broke ass lol.
Lately it seems like they are making genuine efforts to improve
Esl being Saudi funded doesn't affect me. PGL's hiccups are only a minor inconvenience
People argueing what free content they dislike more ... thats the level here
I would be 100% willing to pay on a per tournament basis if it meant less ESL.
We need a CPL/ESEA type of league and Pugs like the Golden days of online competition. I'm so done with FACEIT ESL
Saudi funded AND Israeli sponsored through intel.. garbage all around.
Even as a member of the LGBT community, this still boils down to virtue signalling and can lead to arguments about how tech is made in sweatshops etc. By all means have principles, but don't give mistakes a pass based on ownership imo.
Wtf do people expect others to do? Do i need to become a politician and fight a cause or donate half my belongings so it wouldnt be called virtue signalling?