The benches tonight (front row = tonight's featured guests)
(No fanfare tonight. The lights come up at half brightness.)
Livewire: Welcome to The Benches. Tonight is a different episode. Our theme is the world outside the server: the moments when something bigger than a match decided what happened in one.
Livewire: We're turning the captions down. Nobody gets an absurd question from me tonight. I've been told this is a growth moment.
Footnote: These are my favorite stories, and the ones I'm most careful with. Everything tonight is sourced. Where I only know part of something, I'll say so.
▶ THE TAPE Chapter one: the Major that never happened
ESL One Rio was scheduled for May 2020. COVID-19 pushed it to November, then it was cancelled on September 9, 2020. There was no Valve Major between Berlin in September 2019 and Stockholm in October 2021: the first year without one since 2013.1
The top tier moved online. In our index of S, A and B-tier events, the online share went from roughly a quarter before 2020 to 78% in 2020 and 83% in 2021, and it still sits near half.2 It was during those online years that the coaching bug was exposed (August 2020). And Cloud9 terminated four players over COVID-related contract violations, one of them Sonic, who reached his first Major four years later with Wildcard.1
Rio finally hosted a Major in November 2022. It was won by a team that wasn't allowed to use its own name.
The Ledger: A caveat on my own number: some of that online share could be which smaller online events got indexed better in later years. The direction is real. The exact decimals I hold loosely.2
Dusty: I remember that year. Every event was people in their bedrooms. It was still Counter-Strike. It just didn't have a room around it.
▶ THE TAPE Chapter two: the war, in four parts
Orgs (2022). After Russia's invasion of Ukraine, ESL bans Russian organizations with government ties from its events (March 2, 2022); PGL follows. Virtus.pro plays as Outsiders, and wins the Rio Major under that name on November 13, 2022. Gambit's roster is sold to Cloud9, and Gambit is listed as disbanded.3
People (2022). The Washington Post profiled Ukrainian pros turned refugees, including sdy, who went to bed in Kyiv on February 23 thinking about matches. He stood in for NaVi from June to December 2022.4
Rosters (2023). In June 2023 NaVi benched its Russian players and rebuilt internationally. The new NaVi won the Copenhagen 2024 Major.3
Individuals (2026). Ukraine's esports federation banned Ukrainian players for twelve months, to June 30, 2027, for playing with Russian players or organizations or in Russia. Among them: s1mple and Spirit's zont1x. The bans apply to federation events only.5
Footnote: One more thing, carefully: a peer-reviewed study of HLTV ratings found that Ukrainian and Russian pros' performance improved after the invasion, "contrary to popular thinking." I've only read the abstract, so I won't give you numbers. But it's the kind of detail that stops you.6
Dusty: Four chapters. First the teams, then the people, then the rosters, then one player at a time. It keeps getting smaller and closer.
Livewire: ...
(Livewire says nothing. For Livewire, this is the loudest possible reaction.)
▶ THE TAPE Chapter three: the money
January 2022: Savvy Games Group, owned by Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund, buys ESL Gaming and FACEIT for about $1.5 billion. The deal was criticized over Saudi Arabia's human-rights record.7
The Esports World Cup in Riyadh adds Counter-Strike: NaVi win the 2024 event; The MongolZ win in 2025. And in June 2026, Team Falcons, a Saudi Arabian organization, win IEM Cologne, a Major run under ESL's IEM brand.7
The Ledger: I'll state it the way the facts line up and stop there: the first Major won by a Saudi-owned team was run by a Saudi-owned organizer. What that means is the reader's call.
Footnote: That's my rule too. Facts only; let people draw conclusions.
▶ THE TAPE Chapter four: the visa
Bad News Eagles, the first Kosovar team at a Major, played three straight Majors in 2022-23, much of it with no organization behind them. Kosovo's Prime Minister visited the team after Antwerp. Kosovo's Minister of Culture, Youth and Sports helped them get visas for Rio.8
At Rio, they knocked out the reigning champions, FaZe.8
Sunshine: I know it's the quiet episode. But I'm allowed one "YES" for the visa story. One.
Livewire: Granted. One.
Sunshine: YES.
(The studio lights come up one notch.)
FLIP BOARD · Footnote presents: the layers, as of tonight
Still being written
The federation bans run to June 30, 2027. The war isn't over. The Esports World Cup keeps growing. Tonight the hopes board is quieter, and a few of the hopes aren't about Counter-Strike at all.
HOPES BOARD · for a story that's still being written
The world outside the server, still pressing in
Dusty: That s1mple gets a goodbye someday that's about Counter-Strike and nothing else.
The Ledger: That June 30, 2027 arrives and nothing new gets added to this file before then.
Sunshine: That the kids in Kyiv, and everywhere else, get to be bored at a LAN again. Bored! Safely bored!
The Prosecutor: That every rule deciding who can play is published before it's used, and the same for everyone.
Weekend Warrior: Peace, honestly. That's the whole strip.
Footnote: That this layer of the dig site stops getting thicker.
Livewire: No IPPON tonight. The point goes to everyone who kept playing through all of that: the ones who moved, the ones who stood in, the ones who played under a name that wasn't theirs.
Livewire: Next week, the lights come back up. Promise.
No challenge this week, on purpose. The challenge standings sit still: Dusty, The Prosecutor and Weekend Warrior on one win each.
Next time: the Map of the World special. China has sent 25 players to Majors and none has reached the playoffs. Germany has never played a Major final. Turkey just reached its first semifinal. Mongolia went from no organization to a Major final in two years. And Dusty has a segment about a nation nobody puts on the map.
Footnote's footnotes (every "ding!" in tonight's episode, sourced)
- ESL One Rio 2020 cancelled Sept 9, 2020; no Major between Berlin 2019 and Stockholm 2021; Cloud9's COVID-related terminations (Oct 24, 2020); Sonic's first Major at Shanghai 2024. Shacknews · Liquipedia: Cloud9
- Online share of S/A/B events by year, from event infoboxes in Stazione's index. Direction solid; exact shares depend on indexing.
- ESL ban on Russian orgs with government ties (Mar 2, 2022); Outsiders win IEM Rio 2022 (Nov 13, 2022); Gambit roster sold to Cloud9; NaVi's June 2023 rebuild and Copenhagen 2024 title. Liquipedia: Outsiders · Liquipedia: Natus Vincere
- sdy profile (Washington Post, Mar 8, 2022); NaVi stand-in June-Dec 2022. Washington Post · Liquipedia: sdy
- Ukrainian Esports Federation bans, 12 months to June 30, 2027, federation events only. Dust2.us · Dot Esports
- Nesseler & Shtrum, "War and Esport," Games and Culture (SAGE). Abstract only. SAGE
- Savvy Games Group (PIF) acquisition of ESL and FACEIT (~$1.5B, Jan 2022) and the criticism; Team Falcons (Saudi org) win IEM Cologne 2026. Wikipedia: FACEIT · Esports News UK · Liquipedia: Team Falcons
- Bad News Eagles: Kosovo PM visit, minister's visa help for IEM Rio 2022, elimination of FaZe. EGamersWorld · Liquipedia: Bad News Eagles
Liquipedia content is used under CC-BY-SA 3.0. The panelists are fictional archetypes; every fact they cite is real and checked.
Worth arguing about: which real-world event will still be shaping Counter-Strike five years from now?
Argue it out in the discussion thread. That's where this actually gets resolved.
The Benches · season one
- The series
- Thrown Away, Won Anyway
- Cursed Finals
- Borrowed Players
- The World Outside the Server (you're here)
- The Map of the World
- Dynasties
- Scandals, Skins and Money
- The Game Right Now (finale)