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Businesses The Almighty Buck The Media Games Entertainment

Counter-Strike Finally Gets the League It Deserves 113

Posted by timothy from the your-boy-zoolander's-on-the-move dept.
An anonymous reader writes: Counter-Strike is the oldest eSport in the world today, with its roots stretching back to the dawn of the millennium. But unlike rival games like League of Legends or StarCraft 2, its pro scene has been mostly reliant on sporadic tournaments instead of a regularised league. That's changed with the announcement of the ESL ESEA Pro League, the first Counter-Strike Global Offensive league with a seven-figure prize pot. As one writer points out, this is a huge boost for the pro scene even without developer Valve's involvement: everything from paid travel expenses to regular viewing schedules will help the scene, and let the top players play even better than before: "it has taken over 15 years to happen, but now Counter-Strike has a tournament that can potentially elevate it to become one of the biggest eSports in the world."
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Counter-Strike Finally Gets the League It Deserves More

Counter-Strike Finally Gets the League It Deserves

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  • I feel bad cs1.6 competitions are not played in international matches anymore. I am a fan of cs1.6 (and not GO)
    • May be that 1.6 is a better game to play, but CS:GO has everything that made 1.6 fail as a spectator game.
  • People are still playing CS?

    • People are still playing CS?

      Funny post from a man whose sig celebrates a band thirty years gone.

      • Unlike music, video games have a much more fleeting popularity.
        With that being said, I played the shit out of CS and Q3 Arena... Fun as hell.
        The last video game I finished was the Mass Effect trilogy(brilliant)
        I'm just surprised with how fast the video gaming landscape changes that there are still people doing CS.

        I still think it's a great game!

      • People are still playing CS?

        Funny post from a man whose sig celebrates a band thirty years gone.

        I assumed his sig was a joke.

        The alternative paints a terrifying scenario of a secure mental hospital with a missing patient, carrying an axe.

    • I still loving playing Quake. Not QuakeWorld, Quake. Love the gameplay and the physics.

      • I totally agree.
        Q3 was a helluva way to spend an evening.
        I think I'm getting talked back into playing it again...

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ameoba ( 173803 )

      Sure. It's on the 3rd successful iteration now - there was Counter-Strike: Source in 2004 and everyone is currently playing Counter-Strike: Global Offensive from 2012.

  • Counter-Strike is the oldest computer game feigning it's some sort of sport in the world today.

    Sorry but the whole notion of "eSports" is idiotic.

    Sure, there's a bit of temporal glory for the guy who rolls over Pac-Man, etc, etc. But it isn't a sport.

    The fact that the supposed "league" is rife with cheating/hacks with no real way to catch creative cheaters simply detracts from the notion of "sport" even more.

    • While it's not a sport in the traditional sense that it requires significant athletic prowess, it is still something that's played competitively so it is functionally equivalent in most other aspects.

      The fact that the supposed "league" is rife with cheating/hacks with no real way to catch creative cheaters simply detracts from the notion of "sport" even more.

      Sounds like baseball, cycling, and just about every other high-level sport out there.

      • The key difference is that nobody owns tennis, baseball, cycling, chess, poker, or archery. There's no Tennis Holding LLC that can pull videos off YouTube and pull merchandise out of stores. With video games, on the other hand, a game's publisher owns exclusive rights to make and show the game and can use copyright to shut down a league's broadcasts if the league doesn't toe the game's publisher's party line.

    • Sorry but the whole notion of "eSports" is idiotic.

      These kind of labels are given by "the media". I am sure you can name a few more examples yourself.

      Are eSports real sports and does it even matter? https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]

    • Re:If I hear "eSport" one more time... (Score:4, Informative)

      by GroeFaZ ( 850443 ) on Thursday May 07, 2015 @12:09PM (#49639307)
      eSports are eSports. They have a different name than "sports" because it's not the same thing. It has a similar name to "sports", because it's a similar thing.

      Regarding cheating: Yes, because real sports, especially the professional/competitive level, is known to be free of cheaters.
      Arguably, eSports cheaters are much easier to catch because by definition, everything is controlled by a computer and most cheaters leave some sort of trace that can be tracked. I'm pretty sure that you will find no physical sport that has as strict an enforcement of anti-cheating rules as even the most lenient/lazy competitive eSports games. Especially at the highest level of play, during tournaments where competitors are physically present, with hardware provided by and players under observation of judges, cheating is practically impossible. Many physical sports would be better off if their tournaments had the same ratio of cheating as eSports.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        There's already a name for them though 'games' that described them perfectly..

        • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

          by phantomfive ( 622387 )
          A game is something you play in a yard with friends, croquet sticks and a glass of bubbly.

          The word 'game' doesn't capture the amount of training these participants go through to compete at their level. When $100k is on the line, it's no longer a game.

      • Regarding cheating: Yes, because real sports, especially the professional/competitive level, is known to be free of cheaters.

        ROFLCOPTER. Do you REALLY believe that? All sorts of athletes keep getting banned for cheating by using/abusing performance enhancing substances. That is just the first and most obvious example I can think of.

    • The fact that the supposed "league" is rife with cheating/hacks with no real way to catch creative cheaters simply detracts from the notion of "sport" even more.

      Yep, nothing like cycling at all.

  • For something to be "sport" (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/sport

    I think the definition of "sport" that gaming falls into is number 6:

    "an object of derision; laughingstock. "

  • You mean TribalWar or TWL weren't good enough? [/troll]

  • Gosh, was 2001 that long ago? I remember it like it was only 14 years ago...

    now get off my lawn!

  • Games are not sport.

    And just seeing the word "eSport" makes me feel like punching something.

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