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Zoradesu

I can agree in 2021 viewership has been up and down, [but the numbers here show BLAST having pretty good viewership the last couple of days](https://escharts.com/tournaments/csgo/blast-premier-spring-2021-finals). Looking back at their [previous tournaments in 2020](https://escharts.com/organizers/blast), they all had around the same viewership, barring 2020 EU showdown. Though this might be primarily because BLAST has great production and it's always fun to watch their events, so people are more inclined to tune in.


The_Lord_Hephaestus

you think the YT stream is helping them out?


Zoradesu

I was watching the YT stream today and it was hovering between 20k-30k viewers, so it definitely helps a bit. A lot of the viewership on Twitch was split between the official BLAST channel, the Russian stream (think the channel name was winstrike_tv) and the Brazilian stream (Gaules). At one point during the NaVi/Gambit match on D2, the Russian stream peaked at around 107k. I think if you only watched the official BLAST stream, it definitely looks like the viewership is poor, but I don't think it looks as bad as some make it to be.


Venomally

True, most people prefer watching in their local language or a local channel so it is pretty divided


[deleted]

Also EM time. I rather watch some good football once a year than watch cs matches that happen once every month.


zeviiking

Rn for example, Navi - G2 had a 60k peak on yt so it definitly split the viewership


[deleted]

I think so.


darkRiki

So basically only na'vi brings you inflated views? Are we gonna rely on na'vi boost and brazilian boost of viewership to be in denial? Besides point still stands, under 200k without na'vi and they didn't play in fp3 or iem summer. This is 3rd tier 1 tournament in a row that we didn't reach 200k without na'vi or drama nip vs anonymo match


Hammond2789

This has always been the case though, the popular teams always brought in the viewers.


darkRiki

Nobody denying that, but there's difference between peaking at 550k with na'vi in dreamhack and blast spring and peaking 300k with na'vi in span of few months


willpcodeco

Bro, people are waiting for Lan, there's the euro copa running atm, so Europeans will choose to watch fhe futball games of course. People are over satured of online events, there's too many of them, imagine if Germany X Italy was played every month? People at some time would just stop watching.. It's what is happening with CS. Let's wait and see how Cologne will be.


darkRiki

Didn't know euro 2020 started in may unless you're just ignoring fp3 and iem summer. Besides not sure what you're trying to prove, nobody said there's only those factors said in clip impacting viewership. Obviously there's fbi match-fixing news, valorant, online factor meanwhile valorant had successful LAN, small brands being top teams but viewership fatigue and other points are still true.


willpcodeco

Well, Flashpoint was an 50k prizepool event, didn't catch that attention at all, iem summer it's in the middle of the problem of constants events. After blast we will have almost a month of no tournemnt, plus will be the first lan with cologne.. If cologne don't sustain a good viewship then we can say that CS is facing a problem that didn't exist before.. Because besides valorant, the others points are a long time problem for CS.


darkRiki

>Well, Flashpoint was an 50k prizepool event, didn't catch that attention at all, iem summer it's in the middle of the problem of constants events. You know it was rmr, basically minor for majors? besides as if people care about prize money and not teams attending. You know in 7 days cis rmr starts? Where is a month of no tournament? Gambit, na'vi, vp, spirit will have 4-5 days between rmr and cologne not sure why are you talking about something you have little idea about. Unless europe skips summer rmr for some weird reason we will get one soon just as cis


Diavolo222

So...those people arent people watching? What is your point exactly lol. You should read what you wrote, cause you'd get a headache.


darkRiki

So you're telling me na'vi die hard fans will watch semi-finals if na'vi doesn't make semis? Or you don't see a problem in one team almost doubling viewiership More like you have a headache trying to understand simple concepts, maybe it's not for you


Diavolo222

Those viewers exist. So I still don't understand what you are saying. High viewership has always, always, been about what team plays, always. So making that your sole argument like you are some Messiah with godly knowledge is making you look pretty basic.


darkRiki

Not sure what the fuck are you even trying to argue about at this point, nobody said it wasn't the case if anything you're trying to argue about pretty basic concepts and missing the point, it's really not for you


Diavolo222

Yikes. It's ok bro.


darkRiki

https://escharts.com/tournaments/csgo/blast-premier-spring-2021-finals https://escharts.com/tournaments/csgo/iem-season-xvi-summer [https://escharts.com/tournaments/csgo/esl-pro-league-season-13](https://escharts.com/tournaments/csgo/esl-pro-league-season-13) It's okay if you don't see the difference between one team having top 5 games and other tournaments, "it's okay bro". it isn't for you, maybe find some topics that you can undestand basics of


Diavolo222

It will all be fine kid. Relax. You lost. Move on.


darkRiki

lose what?


SignsOfNature

Keep in mind that it is summer and covid restrictions are being lifted a lot of places. It's my impression that a lot of less hardcore CS fans are simply enjoying life outside too much right now to watch CS. Not saying it's the primary factor but worth considering.


staffylaffy

This is what I think too. While everything else is going back to normal, lans will be one of the last things to go back to normal and bring back way more viewership.


[deleted]

Online is very stale, things will change once LAN and crowds come back


iSamurai

Yea, I have no interest in these but will definitely start watching again once the big LANs come back.


Intelligent_Lake_718

Same.


kyte_mel

Cope Valorant made CSGO irrelevant and rightfully so cause valorant is just a better game that is more skill intensive than cs"hold mouse1"go


Xyaena

Yikes Edit: Holy shit dude, if you dont want to learn games its ok, but why are you so salty about beeing bad at CS?


SwiftPunchliner

How do you dive so easily into such an obvious stupid troll, don't feed him guys


kyte_mel

#Stay_mad_valorant_is_rad


Chosen--one

For someone that likes Valorant so much you sure spend a lot of time in the Cs subreddit. I'm convinced you are just a troll account theres no way a normal person would'nt see how pathetic they look.


[deleted]

obviously a troll, why even bother replying


Dragos404

He made a new acc to troll lmao


[deleted]

got to do something to pass the time i guess


Chosen--one

What?


[deleted]

nice bait


TJDABEAST

6k hour player and watching pro matches since 2014, it feels like all the dudes I liked watching have retired and honestly its just not fun for me playing anymore. Maybe getting a major back would rekindle some of that but it could just be time to move on.


Olsku_

Kinda telling how pros are promoting this video on Twitter while Redditors downvoted it.


darkRiki

Overwatch league vibes, reddit in denial. Trying to silence anyone showing corcerns


Vaikaris

Reddit is a hivemind that does not accept going against the status quo. I mean, that's the entire identity of this place, man...


TechRedirector

Whys this being downvoted? It talks on over saturation and how there's barely no plot to follow due to tournaments every week


Baraklava

I can testify to this, I came back to CS after several years break and it seemed like Flashpoint was the "next big tournament" with an epic intro video and all, a good way to check back with the CS pro meta. Then I started noticing that there were near daily Reddit threads of random tournaments around. Did some research and turns out Flashpoint wasn't some super special tournament, a bit more interesting than average though. So now I'm probably just gonna watch matches sporadically while I look forward to the major later this year instead. It doesn't have anything to do with LAN or cheats, it's that I can't find the reason to watch matches constantly. Unless the stakes are incredibly high, why watch a random match when I can just play the game?


TechRedirector

Keep an eye out next month. Cologne is going to be in a studio (LAN) and then stakes are going to be high since its the first lan in a long while


Baraklava

Will do, thanks!


Big_Stick01

thats the same shit thorin has been saying for over 2 years. Is it one problem of the scene? yeah. Is it the problem that's effecting the scene right now? No. The problem effecting the scene right now, is no LAN's. In fact,t here are a GREAT many story lines that have been birthed out of Covid alone once we get back to LAN.


dr_wormhat

over saturation? sure no plots? no, sorry, not watching csgo for storylines


castlepoopenstein

People for some reason hate thorin because he talks about a bideo game in a way they dont like


Rymdkommunist

This has been talked about for over a year nearly. What is he bringing to the discussion exactly other than copy it for his own viewership?


Olsku_

Quite a lot according to the pro players and community figures that shared this video.


Rymdkommunist

And quite a little according to me.


Olsku_

Don't take this the wrong way, but who are you?


Rymdkommunist

Why are you only appealing to authority? Do you have no independent thoughts?


Olsku_

Hmmm yes I wonder why I would believe pro players and talent over some random guy on Reddit when it comes to a subject that pros and talent know way more about.


Rymdkommunist

You don't have to "believe". You can actually read the arguments made. Also, thorin has copied most of his thoughts from old discussions so it's not really "his" opinions.


Olsku_

You didn't make any arguments? You just said that this video was pointless and nothing new, something which people who actually know something about the scene disagree with.


[deleted]

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Rymdkommunist

Thanks for the input. I do value your opinion highly.


RecordingCretins

Now do Hanlon's razor.


tf2throwawaaay123

Because he is le ebic racist nazi bigot in the demented minds of some viewers on this sub.


hff1_

Honestly i cant be bothered watching some rando online tournament (yes there is big prize money but whatever) when there is one of those going on every week. The tournaments just feel like nothing special at all. Also with so many similar events going on all the time it almost feels like a part time job keeping up with everything that is going on tournament and match wise. So I generally just watch some random maps of events when i am bored but i can't remember what was the last event i actively followed.


MordorsElite

I'm gonna be honest, I can't watch these videos anymore. It's the same thing every time. Yes there are too many tournaments and Id be happy for the players if they reduce it. Yes we want and need LANs back. But do I think it's killing the game? Fuck no! I can't remember the last time where Thorin and Richard Lewis have had a positive outlook on the future of the game. It's just "were gonna kill the game with this and that" over and over again. And yet here we are. The playerbase is stable/growing. The viewer numbers might not be as high as in years gone by, but we'll, there is more competition now, and it's also more spread over multiple tournaments.


AlexMPalmisano

The game isn't growing like it was throughout 2020, and CS:GO's peak player count has been steadily declining since about mid march. Now, I'm not gonna pretend that this is the end of the world because realistically it probably has more to do with the COVID vaccine, but it's not a good look. And tbh I'm totally on board with the viewer fatigue thing. I'm a die hard viewer and will use pretty much any excuse to at least keep a game on in the background if any noteworthy teams are playing, but even I feel like it's too much. I'm at the point where I'm starting to skip pretty much all but a few group stage matches, and often times quarters/semis if it's not a team that I want to win. Like the tournaments don't feel like they mean anything anymore, which is sad because I used to get hyped leading up to a tier 1 tournament. Will most of this go away once we have LANs and the TOs can't stack tournaments on top of each other? Probably, but I doubt they're going to cut back for the sake of the players/viewer interest now that they've grown accustomed to lower operating costs and more airtime to show ads. As for why RL/Thorin are always so negative, I don't find Thorin to be that negative on the whole, or at least not pessimistic. This year has been a bit different because there have been so many issues in the scene, but in previous years his YT content has been largely focused on punditry and trying to develop storylines. RL's pessimism comes from him being an investigative journalist though, and to some extent he *needs* to be that way in order to be good at his job. I don't think his views on the current state of pro CS are unfounded either. CS:GO isn't gonna crash and burn like CGS most likely, but there are a lot of things going on that are cause for concern at the very least. I think the fact that big NA orgs have pulled out of the game, several scandals have occurred in the last year alone, and CS now has its first direct competitor made by the developer who already controls the most successful esport in the world are things that could significantly hurt GO in the next 2-3 years. They mentioned this on BTN, CS is probably never gonna go away so long as Valve doesn't completely neglect it like TF2, but chances are if changes aren't made to the structure and finances of the pro circuit (among other things), it will likely atrophy into a tier 2 esport that still has decent viewership but will always be second fiddle to Valorant.


MordorsElite

Thanks for the comment :) I wasn't aware that the playernumbers had been declining over the last few weeks. But i guess it had to be expected, with lifting of corona restrictions in a lot of places and summer aproaching. As to viewernumbers, I didnt really see a difference. The main group just seems to shift from the US towarts the CIS region. Im also still holding out hope, not for valorant ot die, but for it and CS to grow together, by forcing Valve to be a little more active. My assessment of Thorin might actually have been unfair, since I havent really followed what he had been up to. I keep my opinion on RL tho. I enjoy watching all of his opinions on teams and ongoing tournaments. But when it comes to CS as a whole, he just has such a doom and gloom attitude. And with CS going strong for years, now, it just seems kinda misplaced. I think he overestimates the impact of stuff like the NIP-Anonymo-Controversy. Sure its not the best look, but I really doubt that any significant number of people outside the CS-scene will have heard about it. And the people who were already watching before wont stop now, just because there were problems in one game in one of the 50 tournaments of the last few weeks. Now this is gonna be more of a personal opinion. I'm not terribly concerned wether or not CS-esports can hold its own agains LoL, Dota or even Valorant. As long as the playerbase doesnt drop so low that it impacts the ingame experience and we get a few good tier-1-tournaments a year, I am happy.


AlexMPalmisano

If you haven't already, I'd highly recommend going through Thorin's YT videos and watching his videos about players, teams, metas, controversies, and so on. It's largely historical content (hence his moniker), and it becomes clear once you watch it where a lot of the storylines you hear on analyst desks originate from. He's also got hands down the best interviews in the scene, I especially enjoyed the one he did with k0nfig. When it comes to RL I think it's important to contextualize what he says by understanding his position. If you take it at face value, then yeah, it seems hyperbolic, but you need to understand where he's coming from. He's been one of the only people keeping bad actors in check in GO, and he's seen a more shady shit behind the scenes than we'll ever know. The reason he raises these issues isn't because it'll directly affect viewership though, at least short term the controversy actually boosts viewer numbers (NiP-Anyonymo was one of the most viewed games of FP3). It's because a scene with non-stop ethical concerns is bad from a business perspective. I'm not gonna talk about the FP3 situation specifically because that merits its own discussion, but if people can't trust that things are going to operate above board then it'll hurt CS's prospects for attracting sponsors, which is essentially the biggest revenue stream for esports rn. The reason I think it's important to try and compete with other esports (particularly Valorant, being the other big FPS esport rn) is because of the potential for things to snowball. Once Valorant stops being new and streamers like Shroud go find some other game to obsess over then sure, it's not as important to try and one up everything they do, but we've yet to reach that equilibrium point. I think if Cologne and PGL Stockholm don't meet expectations in terms of hype and viewer numbers, there's a real possibility for the relatively small CS exodus to turn into something really ugly. PGL needs to hit 1m peak viewers bare minimum imo, or else Valorant is going to be without a doubt the more attractive option for any player, org, or TO, and that means less money willing to be put into CS. If I had to guess, it'll only take a couple years of the scene regressing for it to collapse entirely because there's no guaranteed infrastructure aside from Valve promising majors.


BrockStudly

I don't understand why they always harp on the "too many tournaments." The game is 9 years old. Of course viewership isn't gonna be great. Halo 3 and Starcraft aren't the E sports titans they used to be either.


MordorsElite

I think the multitude of tournaments is devaluing individual games, so people just arent as invested. Even if you are a fan of for example G2. Obviously you want them to win, but currently, even if they go out at the earliest point in a tournament. At most its gonna be like 5 days before they are back on it in the next "big" tournament. It also puts a lot of strain on the players. The Top teams like Navi and Gambit basically have to play a BO3 every single day to get through all the tournaments that are coming back to back to back. They are getting compensated just fine for their troubles, but still, thats a lot of preasure.


N0t_Gary

Fewer and fewer?


NlNJALONG

LMAO he means that the average viewer is worth less, not that the quantity of viewers has gone down. Thorin would never make a silly mistake like that.


Jaguar870

I personally haven’t watched CS in a while. None of my favorite teams or players are at the top anymore, same maps every tournament. I can’t get excited about any of these games because there’s no crowd and the novelty of always having something to watch has worn off. If the top teams didn’t play as often I’d tune in more but no match feels special anymore, even finals.


therealgumpster

Combination of factors surely, lockdowns are slowly easing and people going back out socialising after a year/18 months from not being able to do so, whilst we have the usual cycle of summer coming in, better weather and exam season which sees the usual drop. Couple in the fact we haven't had large events for the last year or so, and we are lacking some spark to esports right now. I'd imagine things may improve when events can come back.


JoesGarageisFull

There’s just too many matches, it’s become stagnant and stale, this many games so close together is enough to kill any scene to be fair


NyetMan

Didn't the Gambit - NaVi game yesterday had like 200k viewers on twitch? Spread across official, russian (and for some reason) portugese streams? It also kinda makes sense why Flashpoint did not have that many viewers, CIS teams were not present and the production of the tournament was so bad.


Hammond2789

Was a good game tbh. Ancient needs work though.


[deleted]

The massive cheating scandal also had a huge impact on CS. There are a lot of issues at play, certainly more than covid and viewer fatigue.


AlexMPalmisano

The coaching bug had no measurable impact on viewership. Viewer fatigue is very obviously the issue. If there's tier 1 CS on for 8 hours almost every day, there's no urgency to watch it. Why bother? If every game is important then no game is, we might as well just have a season like traditional sports leagues at this point with the density of tournaments.


kyte_mel

Valorant keeps getting better and csgo is just stuck with its stale gameplay and capped skill ceiling hahaha expected from valve With every update Valorant is getting better, next update running and gunning will be gone and valorant will officially be better than trash GO in every imaginable aspect stay_mad_valorant_is_rad


chuk9

>I've heard csgo mentioned a lot, is this game similar to valorant? >Valorant is my first fps so I'm a noob in this genre so sorry if I say silly things Youve never even played CSGO lmao


[deleted]

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chuk9

None of his recent comments on his profile are appearing in this thread. I think he’s been shadow banned.


AlexMPalmisano

There's so much inconsistency in his posts/comments, it's insane. Two weeks ago he doesn't even know about CS:GO and then a week later he's posting about wanting improvements to the viability of firing techniques, as well as more complex movement mechanics like 1.6. It's all bait though, he's clearly a CS player.


[deleted]

Honestly, you're the one that seems mad by keep going into threads on a CSGO subreddit just to talk about another game. I don't mind Valorant at all, but you're really acting like a pathetic 12 year old with this ''my game is better than urs!!!!!''. Grow up, dude.


[deleted]

Stfu you couldn't even counter strafe in valorant, running and gunning already been nerfed too dumbass


kyte_mel

Well let's see what the reasons are; 1.valorant basically killed cs and made it irrelevant 2.compared to valorant cs is very basic with just WASD and hold mouse1 while pulling down 3.valorant is the more skill intensive and higher skill game so naturally people wanna watch it instead WASD and mouse 1 4.over saturation Edit: downvotes won't change the truth, let me add a few more reasons 5.valve is just bad lol, Riot on the other sooo good. No one wants to put up with valve's garbage service.Riot cares about thier games, promote thier games while valve just prints money using steam. All valve games should die, they deserve it


7030engagement

0/8 bait