IEM Sydney 2023, a $250,000 tournament running from Oct. 15 to 22, will be CS2’s first big esports event—but professional players think the game isn’t ready for competitions yet.
Though fans have wanted to watch pros play CS2 since the game was still in beta, and they were excited after ESL’s announcement regarding IEM Sydney and its future tournaments on Sept. 29, Valve still needs to make lots of improvements to CS2 after its global release on Wednesday, Sept. 27.
Many pros are just now starting to play CS2 as they were still practicing in CS:GO before the game launched. NiKo, arguably the best rifler in CS:GO history, wrote on Twitter on Sept. 28 that CS2 isn’t ready yet after getting his first feel of the game.
Dev1ce, a four-time Major champion with Astralis, wrote the same day that CS2’s gameplay isn’t smooth, and that it doesn’t feel better than CS:GO. Complexity’s star EliGE went further by explaining exactly what he thinks Valve should do to fix the problems after playing his first CS2 scrims on Sept. 27.
There’s enough evidence to back up the pros’ sentiment regarding CS2. The game is still riddled with enormous bugs, and the playerbase keeps finding more. The bug reports are likely to keep coming for some time, maybe even after IEM Sydney is concluded.
Most of the bugs are related to smoke grenades, which have been overhauled for CS2. On top of the bugs, pros have also shared concerns about CS2’s tick rate, as they feel their shots don’t connect like they did in CS:GO.
Pros, however, will have to accept that CS:GO is over and get used to CS2 despite its flaws at the beginning. 16 teams will play at IEM Sydney, including some of the best in the world such as Vitality, ENCE, G2, FaZe Clan, and Natus Vincere.
