Today marks the beginning of the journey to the long-awaited first major for Counter Strike 2 for many teams, including renowned clubs. The open qualifiers are the first step towards PGL Major Copenhagen 2024, but already at this stage, the tournament operator has encountered some mishaps.
Unfortunately, the selection process for the most important event of the half-year is accompanied by numerous negatives and oversights, clearly out of place in matches of such significance.
Platform Bugs
Challenger Mode, to put it mildly, is not very favored by esports athletes. Not only did the platform's website crash, but teams also faced bugs that forced them to recreate lobbies.
A prime example involves matches featuring The Witchers. Essentially, they had to play a sort of bo3 because the first map had a bug, one of the opponents dropped out on the second, and then the team made a gentleman's move by agreeing to replay the map for the third time under equal conditions.
Anti-cheat
It's unclear how much longer Valve will work on improving VAC Live, but the reality is that third-party anti-cheat software, namely Akros, is used in the qualifiers. Complaints about its effectiveness soon followed – Passion UA's coach Mikhail “Kane” Blagin claimed that his proteges lost to cheaters.
If these weren't qualifiers for the RMR, few would pay attention, but such incidents do not paint Valve in the best light as developers, especially when there's a live example of an invasive anti-cheat in Valorant, which is significantly more effective, enough so to not rely on third-party programs during prestigious tournaments.
Pro Players' Reaction: When everything goes so awry that the first day of qualifications has to end at the stage of 1/64 instead of 1/32, no one can avoid criticism.
Bleed coach Aleksandar “kassad” Trifunovic is disappointed that PGL, having so much time to prepare, failed so badly on the first day.
PGL, you're organizing a tournament with more than a million in prize money, and you had a year to prepare for it. The anti-cheat doesn't work, people are getting kicked out of the game, the platform isn't working. And we're spending our time and money on this?- Aleksandar “kassad” Trifunovic
Challenger Mode also came under fire from Aleksandr “s1mple” Kostyliev.
The community can destroy your reputation very quickly, Challenger Mode, fix all this crap, hire more staff, or borrow from other platforms.- Aleksandr “s1mple” Kostyliev
Remember, this European qualification is the first of four. A total of 16 teams will advance to the closed qualifiers for the RMR, which will take place from January 18 to 20.
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