Counter-Strike 2 News

Valve removes CS:GO star Krimz's VAC ban

Just a couple of days after his Steam account was hit by a VAC ban, Freddy 'Krimz' Johansson has confirmed he's free to play again. The Counter-Strike: Global Offensive star, who's currently playing with Fnatic, was mystified after his account was hit during a ban wave on November 28.

Although it hasn't been confirmed, many believe Krimz's ban was linked to Esportal, a third-party matchmaking service which the pro regularly uses. A number of accounts linked to the platform were hit with bans, causing the service to release a statement that it was caused by "compatibility issues between our anti-cheat client and VAC."

It didn't take long for Valve to act on the false-positive bans though. After Esportal produced the right documentation, Valve reversed the bans for the players affected - including Krimz.

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Women in Esports announces CS:GO Lioness League tournament

The British Esports Association has partnered with competitive multiplayer platform FACEIT as part of its ongoing Women in Esports initiative. Women in Esports now has its own organiser page on FACEIT, allowing for the creation of women-only tournaments and hubs.

The initiative aims to create a welcoming community environment and encourage "more women (including trans and cis women) and femme identifying/femme presenting non-binary players" to participate in esports tournaments at any level of play.

The Lioness League, a 5v5 CS:GO tournament, will open for registrations this Friday, November 27, and see up to 32 teams competing in a single elimination bracket. You'll be able to join as a premade team, solo player, or form a group with newfound pals. There's even a prize pool of 3,000 FACEIT points up for grabs, with 2,000 going to the winning team and 1,000 for the runner up. The Lioness League is set to be the start of regular monthly tournaments.

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Counter-Strike: Global Offensive update for 24 November 2020

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CSGO fans are calling on the "caster curse" to make a big game update happen

Head to the Counter-Strike: Global Offensive updates page on the FPS game's site and you'll see that major patches and gameplay tweaks have been a little few-and-far-between of late. It appears the CS:GO community is keen to see a big update hit the game, and soon, and has now decided to try and make this happen using a novel approach - by invoking the "caster curse".

User Night_Not_Day has posted on the multiplayer game's subreddit: "Nothing is stronger than the caster curse. Everyone knows", as part of a call for CS:GO Intel Extreme Masters casters to say the game won't be getting a big update any time soon, on-air. The reasoning behind this idea being, "if the casters assume something, the opposite happens most of the time. This is a well known and widely accepted fact", the user jokes in the post. "If they say [there won't be an update soon] it is almost guaranteed that the update is right around the corner."

As the user reflects in the post, this has gained some traction in the community and the call has been a pretty big success so far. As you can see below, during an IEM stream yesterday casters Alex Richardson and Chad Burchill joined in the fun, saying these powerful words.

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ESL co-founder says the company wants to find the Michael Jordan of esports

One of ESL's co-founders says that the tournament organiser's goal over the next two decades is to find more star players in the world of esports and to find the game that "revolutionises" how we watch competitive gaming.

Speaking at a press conference celebrating the 20 year anniversary of the formation of ESL, Ralf Reichert laid out his plans for what he wants to achieve in the next 20 years. In response to a question from Florian Krebl, Reichert outlines that finding esports' next stars is important, but that finding a game-changing competitive title will also be a main focus.

"[I want to] find the Michael Jordan of esports, because we need stars to make this [industry] better," Reichert says in reference to the NBA legend. "And [I want to] be involved in finding the game that revolutionises watching esports, because we're still in its infancy. Everything we're doing and playing with were originally invented to just play and not necessarily compete in.

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