IEM Cologne 2024 was one of the most important Counter-Strike 2 events of the year and one of the last before the scene changes. Next year will see major tweaks to the esport’s ecosystem, and veteran player and streamer fl0m thinks it’s hard to predict how it will all pan out.
The American streamer has been a pivotal character in the scene ever since the release of CS:GO in 2012. He was one of the guests at IEM Cologne 2024, where Dot Esports was lucky to ask him a few questions on Aug. 17 about the future of CS2, given its massive changes in the upcoming year. For the 31-year-old, it’s almost impossible to predict how the game’s esports scene will look after Valve implements them.
“I don’t think anybody knows what’s going to happen next year,” the streamer told Dot. “Everybody’s going to be winging it and hoping for the best, basically. As of right now, I could see there being way more tournaments, which would be a good thing, but also if people don’t play nice in terms of tournament organizers and everybody just ends up conflicting with one another all the way through, it’s not going to help the players. It’s actually going to make it worse.”
Fl0m underlined how the proposed tweaks are beneficial for tier one teams, those partnered with organizers in the last few years. These include G2 Esports, Astralis, FaZe Clan, MOUZ, or Team Liquid, just to name a few. For tier-two competitors, however, it could mean they need to put in more effort without possibly earning much.
“For tier one players, being able to choose the events you play is great. For tier two players it’s worse, because you need to play in every tournament that you can, because there are qualifiers that you’re going to have to go through, whereas the other teams are getting invites,” fl0m noted. He added that having to choose all of your tournaments like this ultimately led to less opportunity for the “little guy” teams that aren’t already at the top.
The American is afraid tier one teams will still be able to cherry-pick tournaments they want to attend. Tier two, however, will need to grind the open qualifiers, and if they don’t bear fruit, everything could turn into “one big mess” for them.
Last August, Valve revealed its plans to implement an open circuit for the CS2 esports scene, which would cease the partnership leagues. However, to be fair towards the partners who helmed those competitions like ESL and BLAST, these changes are meant to go live in 2025. Since then, other organizers, like StarLadder and PGL, announced a plethora of upcoming events with open circuits, which will broaden 2025’s calendar massively.
Theoretically, this is good news for the North American teams, who are facing many issues. Only Liquid and Complexity seem competitive at the moment. “There is talent that could potentially replace the players, but none of them have any experience because of the lack of the events that you can actually attend,” fl0m said.
More events should mean more opportunities for NA players to prove themselves and gain experience, on paper. Then again, fl0m pointed out how the upcoming outpour could force the current NA organizers to declare their plans for next year, while they all could be “devoured” by the likes of returning companies like StarLadder and PGL. With that in mind, the streamer repeated how nobody knows how uncertain 2025 is for CS2, with our only option being waiting and seeing how it pans out for ourselves.
