Today we will explain basic concepts that you should know while watching a game of Dota 2 or playing it. These terms are widely used by commentators, players, and teams that should be known to the spectators.
Let’s start, the map of DotA 2 is divided into 3 lines:
TOP/BOT
Top is the upper part of the map when playing as Radiant, and the Bot lane when playing as Dire. The perspective of Top or Bot depends on which side of the map you are playing on.
Safelane (BOT lane of Radiant, TOP lane of Dire)
The safelane is the most secured lane for farming it is also called easylane, since the design of the map makes the enemy creeps move towards your side. It is right next to the jungle.
Jungle
Jungle is an area map where we can find neutral creeps, and we say they are because there is one on the Dire side and another on the Radiant side, it is near to the easylane.
Hardlane (BOT lane Dire, TOP lane Radiant)
Hardlane, is also called offlane, and is characterized mainly for being a complicated lane, since the creeps move towards the enemy safelane. In this lane, you see tanky heroes of the game.
Midlane
Frequently abbreviated as mid, midlane is the center lane. It is characterized for being the lane where your hero gets the most experience and if you win this lane then you can easily win the game.
Once explained the lanes, I will explain English terminologies used generally.
Terminology
-
Stun:
It means to paralyze the hero. When you stun a hero, it cannot move or cast a spell.
-
Harass:
It means to disturb. Usually, it is when a hero is preventing the enemy hero from getting gold and experience, by using his abilities.
-
Slow:
It means to reduce the movement speed of the enemy. It can be done by items like a Diffusal blade or playing Bristleback.
-
Farm:
Farm Or farmer means the action of gaining gold and experience by killing an enemy or neutral creeps.
-
Deny:
It is done by pressing the default letter “A” and clicking on the unit or tower that is to be denied. The purpose of doing so is to deny the enemy team from getting gold and experience.
-
Last hit:
It is to give the last blow to an enemy unit or structure to obtain extra money.
-
SS:
It means “missing”, which in turn means that the ally who wrote it has lost the vision enemy / s of his line. When you have them back in your field of vision, you usually type ” re “.
-
Gank
Or “Ganker”, means to surprise jump on one or some enemies when they do not expect to be attacked. This is done in order to harass or get a kill.
-
Kill:
eliminate an enemy hero for a few seconds.
-
Courier:
allows us to stay in the lane and receive Dota 2 items from the store at the same time. With it, you can also buy items from the secret shop or sometimes it is called as Dota 2 market. The courier flies after the 3-minute mark of the game so you will get your items fasters.
-
Warding:
Means putting wards in a certain position of the map.
-
Roam:
Means to explore or try to give the vision of a certain point and provide information of enemy team. It is not the same as warding though you can collaborate with your teammate in order to get a kill on the opponent hero.
-
Stack:
It means making “Stacks” or clusters of different things. It is usually done in the jungle by hitting the creeps and making new ones appear. This is done at a particular timing of the game. It can also be done by correctly casting our abilities at the neutral creeps.
-
Rosh:
Roshan’s abbreviation which is hardest neutral creep to kill on the map.
-
Nuke:
It means to destroy or eliminate a hero instantly. This would mean that we will all concentrate our skills on that hero to eliminate it as soon as possible. Generally, the focus always starts with the supports, because once they are dead, they will not be able to do anything to harass us and prevent us from killing their carry.
-
Teamfight or tf:
It means to launch an attack as the whole team together.
-
Roamer:
Very similar to ganking, roaming, is moving between the lanes. In certain team setups, there are heroes who exclusively dedicate themselves to that.
-
CC:
It means ” Crowd Control” So that you understand it, cc to someone is to throw some skill that does not let him use his skills. It can be a silence, a stun, or hex.
Hexit means to transform an enemy into a harmless chicken.
-
DoT:
Means damage over time. These are the skills that leave a harmful debuff that makes it go down life over time like the Venomancer ultimate.
-
Buff and debuff:
Buff means “positive effect” and debuff “negative effect”. Ally Buff is an aura of precision like a HoT (healing over time). While, Debuff is Damage over time, a harmful aura.
Positions and types of hero
Offlaner:
It is the position that is played in the hardlane or offlane. It is usually done against a tri-lane configuration (1-1-3). Generally, the offlaner is a hero who can keep enemies at bay without getting too close and can tank decent damage. Eg Clockwerk, Dark Seer.
Jungler:
He is the hero who is mainly dedicated to farming the jungle. They are usually heroes with some survival skills. For example, Bloodseeker with his life regeneration. Generally, the farm in the jungle from the beginning of the game involves the purchase of Clarity, Tango, Stout Shield. They can also be heroes who avoid damage directly, for example, Enchantress, which can enrapture units. However, the change of Meta has seen the jungler role going obsolete.
Support (Support):
This type of hero is dedicated to helping the carry to farm and, despite their little damage of right clicks they are not very dependent on gold to be useful in the game. We also have semi-supports that are supported with some useful ability for the lane, e.g. the ultimates of Lina, Lich or Lion.
Lane Support (Support path):
These heroes are the same as the above mentioned, only with the special feature that they have skills that allow their partner to carry stay longer on the lane while healing and providing buffs.
Initiator:
They are heroes who have one or several skills that allow you to start a team fight favorable to your team. Ex. Tusk, Magnus, Disruptor.
Carry:
It is distributed in hardcarry and semicarry. The hard-carries are effective once they have items until then they will be not very effective. The semi-carries are not much dependent on the Dota 2 items but cannot deal as much damage as compared to the hard carry.
Ganker:
They are heroes who move between the lanes to kill the enemy or keep him under a tower by harassing them. The hero’s role is to facilitate the farm of your team and hinder it of the opposing team. They are usually heroes with some stun, slow, invisibility or nuke. Eg Bloodseeker, Clinkz, Pudge. These are also called Roamer.
Nukers:
Heroes with a large amount of explosive damage.
Tank:
Heroes with a lot of resistance. They usually have a lot of life or armor. Tanks are useful in team fights and to press under the tower.
Disabler:
Disablers are heroes who have some silence or stun that prevents the enemy hero (s) from executing their spell. They are usually the focus of the first focus in team fights.
Pusher:
They are heroes who have a great ease to pressure the enemy towers and knock them down. Eg. Nature Prophet.
Dota 2 Items
-
Vision Ward:
They provide you with the vision of the map for a limited time. After then, they are expired and you have to buy new ones.
-
Sentry / ies:
They are used to see invisible heroes and remove vision wards planted by your enemies.
-
Dust:
Vision provider, detect invisible heroes.
-
Gem:
Gem of true sight, increases your area of vision and lets you see invisible heroes as long as you have it.
-
Bkb:
Black King Bar.
-
Blink:
Blink Dagger or heroes with blink like Queen of Pain.
-
Rapier:
Divine Rapier the most powerful item of the game but is dropped on death.
-
Mek:
Mekansm for healing your team
-
tp:
Scroll of teleportation. It can also mean teleporting somewhere.
Basic Tips
- Stay under your tower whenever the enemy team is pushing.
- Play as a team.
- If a tower is hitting you, you can hit an allied creep with your “A”, which will confuse the tower and will hit your creeps instead of your hero.
- Activate an in-game guide while you do not know the character well.
- The supports defend the carry and even give life for it.
- Pulled the creep camps and stack.
- Deny the towers when they have a little life.
- Always try to bring a tp with you
- Try to avoid the river as much as possible. The river is a treacherous place and therefore you can be ganked easily.
In early 2016, Counter-Strike:Global Offensive was becoming more and more popular mainly because of the CS:GO skin gambling, buying, trading, and betting. A lot of people were creating inventories filled with luxury knives and other weapon skins, and they were always coming to play the game mainly because they invested a lot of money into it.
However, not everyone acquired expensive inventories by purchasing skins, a lot of people earned their first knife by gambling on numerous different websites.
In late 2016, Valve started sending out cease and desist letters to all of the popular skin gambling websites, and this was the downfall of skin gambling industry.
However, in mid-2017, many moved to other types of skin betting sites like the ones where you can trade in a cryptocurrency called Skincoin, or CSGO gambling sites where you are required to do all sorts of skin gaming tasks to acquire skins for CSGO.
So, despite the projected downfall, the industry started to recover in the years that followed and is still going strong to this very day.
Before we continue and tell you all about skin gambling and buying we don’t advocate skin gambling at Gamopo.com. We only recommend trusted CSGO betting providers , 99% of trusted providers don’t offer skins gambling. If this is your thing please be careful as most providers have no licenses and may only be out for your money. With that said lets get into it.
HOW HUGE WAS THIS MARKET?
Some reports say that CS:GO skin gambling related to esports was worth over $5 billion dollars in 2016. This is a ridiculous amount of money for a market based on virtual skins.
Ever since skin gamblers had a chance to turn their skins into real money, they started playing more and more. Websites like bitskins.com and opskins.com were blooming, and they were stacked with skins 24/7.
Sometimes, Valve would ban a couple of bots on certain gambling websites, thinking that they could seize their operations if they lose money, but that never stopped anyone. You can only imagine how much money they earned that they had no problem if their bot gets banned with over $300,000 worth of skins on it.
However, things have cooled down as of late, mainly because trade ban for each skin has been introduced. Basically, if you trade a certain skin you will get a 14 days trade ban on that same skin, and you will not be able to trade it for that period of time.
Skin gambling websites were earning so much money that they decided to sponsor different Esports teams and organization. For instance, Hellraisers were sponsored by csgopolygon.com. On the other hand, hellcase.com was one of the biggest sponsors of StarSeries i-League, and they even added drops to the live stream. They tried to create a similar atmosphere to the Major with those skin drops.
Due to bans and controversies, the skins betting industry began to decline in 2017, but this was not the end by any means. Players continue to bet on skins to this day, without much trouble.
It was first thought that the industry would fall apart, but in reality, it just continued to grow, albeit at a slower rate. At first, the predictions were that it would be worth more than $20 billion, but it is now estimated that the CS:GO skin betting industry is worth $13 billion in 2020.
This is still significantly higher than the $5 billion back in 2016, which certainly shows a lot of promise that the industry will continue to grow despite the many controversies and problems.
NOT ALL OF THESE WEBSITES SEIZED THEIR OPERATIONS
One of the most popular gambling websites is definitely CSGOFAST.com. They have been live ever since skin gambling was introduced to the scene. However, ever since trade bans were put in place, their business has been very bad. So they followed other popular websites and decided to offer real-money gambling.
So yes, there are a lot of operational websites that used to offer CS:GO skins gambling, but almost all of them have switched sides and now they are offering real money wagers.
TYPES OF CS:GO SKIN GAMBLING
CSGO skin betting is not as simple as some believe it to be, and one thing that proves this is the size of this industry. However, more importantly, the answer lies in the many types of CS:GO skin gambling that exist.
In the following sections, we’ll talk about methods like Counter-Strike; Global Offensive skin jackpot, CSGO match betting, Counter-Strike roulette, and many others. Keep reading to learn all about them.
COUNTER STRIKE: GLOBAL OFFENSIVE SKIN JACKPOT
csgofast.com
Almost all of the skin gambling websites had skin jackpot put in place. You are probably wondering how did they earn so much money if they only provided jackpot and other players competed in it. Well, they would take 5% minimum commision, some of the websites even 10-15%. The math is simple if there is a $1000 pot and the commision is 10%, that is $100 every 60 seconds or so. Now you can imagine how much money there were able to earn.
CS:GO SKIN BETTING
Another very popular skin gambling method was betting on Esports events and in particular CS:GO match betting. A lot of websites started adding this section of gambling, simply because people were enjoying betting on numerous Esports events. Needless to say that viewership was insane in every single tournament.
Best CSGO Skin Gambling Sites
There are plenty of sites where you can bet on Counter-Strike: Global Offensive skins, but not every one of those is the best CS GO gambling site. Only a couple of them can be considered as the best in the business, and we wanted to share the ones we believe to be the best for all players:
- Unikrn
- Pinnacle
- GG.bet
- Betway
- CyberBet
How to Bet on CSGO skins?
If you are one of those players who are new to the world of Counter-Strike: Global Offensive skin betting, you are probably quite confused with how this type of betting works.
It’s actually quite simple. There are plenty of third-party betting sites where you can gamble your skins on CS GO tournaments and matches. You only need to use the software tools offered on the site, which are always extremely simple to figure out. The software of the site is the mediator that will take away your skin if you lose the bet, or award you with one if you win. It’s essentially the same as any other form of betting, so you don’t have to worry about the actual controls, only about finding a great CSGO betting site.
www.drakelounge.come
CRASH
As the time passed by, everyone got fed up with skin jackpot and similar games. So a new idea was needed to attract more and more players, new and old ones. The crash game was introduced to almost all of the gambling sites. And it was a big hit. The game itself was very simple, the bar would start at 1.00, and the longer you stay in the game before withdrawing the more you can win. The trick is to hit the collect button before the bar crashes, and everyone who did not collect their money would lose their initial bet. This was a very interesting and tense game mode, but its downside was that the game can crash at 1.00 and everyone can lose their money before the game even started.
csgocrash.com
COUNTER STRIKE ROULETTE
This is probably the most popular gambling game in the entire world. A simple jackpot with red, black and green. However, there were alternations on various sites, where they introduced x2, x5, x10, x100 lines. Not much else to say about this game, very simple and easy to understand.
csgoroll.com
CS:GO CASE OPENING WEBSITES
Just like crash game mode, case opening became very popular after players got bored of old games. Someone did the calculation and it turned out that Valve was earning a lot of money on case opening(the official one). There was only 0.20% chance to get a covert skin(red), while websites like hellcase.com, farmskins.com, and many others offered a much higher chance of winning a rare skin.
However, the official case opening was also banned in numerous countries around the world.
hellcase.com
CS:GO SKIN TRADING SITES
Even though this is not considered as a gambling method, most of these sites got their bots banned as well. If we take csgojar.com as an example. Their bots got banned with inventories worth around $250,000. To be honest, they were not offering anything illegal, it was a simple procedure of skin trade. If you do not enjoy your skins anymore you can trade them on this website for another one. Of course, the price of selling was way lower, and the price you were paying was a bit higher but still, this was a fair and square deal. I personally used this website a lot, and I never had any problems with it. But, they were tampering with Valve’s profits and they had to go.
cs.money
How Did CS:GO Skin Gambling Start?
The first skin gambling website was csgolounge.com. Once this website was launched, it was mostly considered as a trading post where people could trade skins between themselves without any fees. However, after some time, they introduced the first skin betting platform related to Esports. All of the matches were based on a percentage wins, so there was no way that website will lose money. The more money you place, the more will the percentage drop. Very easy to understand and yet a perfect way to earn money without any risk.
Csgolounge.com is the first website that got cease and desist letter from Valve, and ever since they stayed out of the business.
CSGOFAST.COM
This skin gambling website has been a go-to place for a lot of high rollers. Most of the popular skin gambling YouTubers played on it, and their pots were insane. At their peak, their average daily pot was well above $600. You can imagine how much money owners of this website made.
You can also find a lot of videos on YouTube were people won crazy amounts of money with a very low chance of winning. Overall, csgofast.com started off with skin jackpot, but after a while, they had a big variety of games to play on. They have also introduced skin betting to their website, followed by slots, case opening, crash, hi-lo, and many others.
To conclude, csgofast was one of the most popular skin gambling providers, and after the series of cease and desist letter, bot bans, and other trading restrictions their traffic is lower than ever. But still, they are average around 3000-4000 unique players every day, even though they switched to gambling with real money.
csgofast.com
CSGO500.COM
Another very popular website that had over 7000 unique visitors per day back in 2016. They were the first website who introduced a different method of roulette to the skins gambling industry. Instead of ordinary, black, red and green roulette, csgo500 decided to introduce something that is more rewarding to their players. Black(x2), red(x3, blue(x5), gold(x50).
Ever since it was released players were swarming to play there, and to be honest, it was not that easy to win there, simply because there were a lot more options to bet on, and logically you had bigger chance to lose. Just like csgofast, this website was one of the first ones on the Valve’s list, and their bots were banned all the time.
However, after trade bans and limits, they decided to switch to the VGO, cryptocurrencies and other Dota 2, H1Z1 skins, but you can still deposit Counter-Strike:Global Offensive skins. Furthermore, most of their business is now made through BitCoin deposits and withdrawals.
csgo500.com
CSGOLOTTO.COM
Probably all of you know what happened with csgolotto. For you who are not that familiar with it here is the quick breakdown. This skin gambling website was owned by two YouTubers, Trevor “Tmartn” Martin, and Tom “Syndicate” Cassel. They were both promoting it on their YouTube channels without ever disclosing the part that they are running this gambling website. And we are not talking about small YouTubers. They even played on the site, and they were winning crazy amounts of money, and you can guess why. Because they rigged the system in their favor.
Ever since that information became known to the public and to the CS:GO community, csgolotto closed and never opened again. But they still made an insane amount of money, as they attracted all of the popular skin gambling YouTubers, and their pots averaged around $800 per day.
csgolotto and one of its owners, Tmartn
CSGOSHUFFLE.COM
Another scandal related to skin gambling. The most popular twitch streamer at that time, James “PhantomL0rd” Varga was primarily a gambler on twitch. He barely played any games on twitch, and he was attracting over 50,000 concurrent viewers. He was always doing crazy giveaways, giving back to the community, and most of his YouTube videos are based around him giving away luxury knives to the underaged kids. You can only imagine how it must feel when a 15-year-old kid gets a $2000 knife for free.
However, everything was not so perfect for James. Most of the time he spent streaming, he was gambling on csgoshuffle.com. But at one point, his skype was hacked and hackers got his chat logs. That chat was between him and his developer of csgoshuffle. It can be clearly seen from the messages that he was adjusting odds so he can win. It backfired massively on him and he had to flee the country. No one heard from him for a long time, and he recently came back to streaming. Furthermore, he can not stream on twitch anymore, and now he is streaming himself PLAYING video games on YouTube. And guess what, he is averaging 100 viewers per day.
If all of this weren’t enough, for the past two years, James and Twitch have been in a lawsuit limbo. Varga wanted $35m in damages for the fact that Twitch banned him, while Twitch argued that the damages should be capped at $50,000. The trial is set to begin in October 2020, and hopefully, it will be resolved soon after. As for the site csgoshuffle.com, it’s no longer in operation.
phantomL0rd playing on csgoshuffle.com
Of course, csgoshuffle seized its operations and it never reopened again.
DRAKELOUNGE.COM
After csgolounge.com stopped offering betting content someone had to step up and take their players away from them. Drakelounge was a part of “drake” series of gambling websites. They were operating with numerous different websites, mostly based on roulette, case opening, and their latest addition drakelounge.
What players mostly enjoyed is odds betting. No more percentage bets where you would see your winning potential shrink everytime someone places a big bet. Alongside decimal odds, they were one of the first skin gambling websites that offered 24/7 live support. They were never involved in any scandals and they were always rewarding their players and community overall.
Even though skin gambling is not as viable as it was in the past, this website is still going strong, as they switched to the direct skin deposit through opskins.com, gift cards, and BitCoin deposits.
To conclude, in my personal opinion this was the best skin betting website on the entire scene.
drakelounge.com
HELLCASE.COM
This is not mainly a skin gambling website. They offered exactly the same thing as Valve itself offered. They publicly stated that they are offering much higher odds to win more expensive and luxury items than Valve is.
This is the main reason for their popularity. But they have taken this one step further. They invested a lot of money into hosting numerous smaller tournaments where lower tiered teams could compete and prove themselves on the scene. However, they did not stop here, they are the main sponsor of StarSeries i-League, and that says a lot about owners of this website.
At the moment, they are still alive, and they are doing okay. They were always around 2000-3000 unique visitors per day, and that number did not get any smaller despite recent events and restrictions.
hellcase.com
CS.MONEY
Last but not least, cs.money is a trading platform, but the second party is the website itself. So technically you can not call this a skin gambling website because there is no game of chance attached to it.
I feel sorry for cs.money, because their bots were banned on regular basis, and they did nothing wrong. Yes, their values were higher once compared to other websites like opskins and bitskins, but still, people could use this website to exchange their old skins to get new ones.
No one ever had any problems with websites like this, and it feels like they are treated unfairly. But to this day, they are still offering quality skins. And also, some of the rarest skins can be found on their bots. For instance, while I was writing this they had one of the most unique skins on one of their bots. Souvenir Factory New Dragon Lore with a JW sticker. They are selling it for a whopping price of $27,000.
cs.money
How do you feel about scandals related to some of these skin gambling websites? Also, do you justify CS:GO content creators on YouTube sponsoring some of these shady gambling websites? Be sure to let us know your thoughts in the comments down below.
CONCLUSION
The biggest problems that skin gambling occurred was underaged gambling. There was no way of stopping kids from taking part in the gambling scene. The only way to limit them from visiting these types of websites was not efficient. The only thing they could do is add a box to confirm that you are 18 or older, which is totally stupid, and it does nothing. But still, on the legal sides of things, they did the correct thing.
Furthermore, skin gambling really ignited the community, and it was growing rapidly. But the money they were acquiring from these websites and the amount of scamming that was flooding around the game and its community was unreal, so I understand why this had to be done by Valve.
However, this is not the end of skin gambling. Not only that there are websites still going strong, but there are also numerous lawsuits filed against many of these sites, mostly related to the underaged gambling.
Stay tuned for the second part of this article, where we will talk about the most popular skin gambling websites out there. If you are interesting in CSGO betting and learning more about it head over to our CSGO Betting for the best advice and tips.
What do you think, did Valve to a good thing with cease and desist letters? How do you think CS:GO scene and community would look like if skin gambling was still a thing? Be sure to let us know your thoughts in the comments down below.
Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, also known as Csgo is a first-person shooter developed by Hidden Path Entertainment and Valve co. CS:GO has been around since late 2012. However, this is not the only Counter-Strike game ever made. Counter-Strike 1.6 and CS: Source were big hits in the gaming community once they were released, but they had one problem, that being old dated graphics.
What makes CS:GO so popular, is its competitiveness. That’s why CS:GO became an eSport. Not only did it become an eSport, CS:GO set a prime example for all the other games. There are a lot of various tournaments and leagues hosted not just by producers, but also third-party organizations decided to host and sponsor some of the most popular tournaments in Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. Furthermore, there are 2 main tournaments per year, they are most commonly known as Majors. These types of tournaments are able to attract over 1 million concurrent viewers, which is incredible. Prize pools are another must for every tournament. Let’s take FACEIT London MAJOR 2018 as an example, it had a whopping prize pool of $1.000,000.
Now that you are informed of how much money and popularity there is around Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, you will not have to think twice about playing it.
There are numerous teams and players striving to be the best. In order to achieve that, they have to communicate and use certain terminology. Here, you will be able to read about the most popular csgo terms.
BASICS
FRAG: this is a common term not just in CS:GO, commonly used in every shooter game. It means to kill one person.
CALL: to inform your teammates about the positioning of your opponents. Each spot on the map has its own call-out, let’s take map Dust 2 as an example, you can make a call by saying “two guys long”. However, you can also call for someone’s hp, used utility, etc.
IN-GAME LEADER/CALLER: an in-game leader is a person in charge of making different calls. For example, if an in-game leader informs you to push long, you should push it, because he is a person with a plan.
ENTRY KILL: this term is used as a terrorist, attacking side. If you or your teammate is able to kill a person defending either A or B site. You can simply make a call, “I’ve got an entry on A”.
A/B: short for bombsite A or B. Places of the map where the bomb has to be planted by Terrorists or defended by Counter-Terrorists.
C4: used by both sides in a game. Terrorists have to plant the bomb on one of the sites, and Counter-Terrorist has to either not allow bomb plant to happen, or to defuse it.
CARRY: a person who gets the important kills to help his team win a match. Usually, this person is also a top fragger for his team.
K/D RATIO: stands for kills per death ratio. Players tend to compete who will have the bigger K/D ratio at the end of the match.
T/CT: shorten for Terrorist and Counter-Terrorist.
LOW/LIT/LEGGED: Csgo terms used to inform your teammates that one of the enemies has been hit by you. Mainly used to keep information short, it’s easier to say “one is low on A”, then “one has been hit for 75 on A site”.
2K/3K/4K/ACE: this is shortened for 2/3/4 kills. Ace, on the other hand, is something even better. When one player, wipes out all 5 of the enemies, alongside all the wows and chants, we all call it an ace.
CSGO MATCH BETTING: signifies wagering real-life currency or items from the game on the outcome of specific CS:GO matches.
DINK: when a player gets shot in the helmet. The name comes from the sound heard when this happens in the game.
200 IQ: when someone manages to win a round for their team by pulling off a world-class move like killing a player with one shot using a Desert Eagle, for example.
BANANA: the famous corridor in the Inferno map that leads to bombsite B.
FLICK: a quick shot by which a player manages to kill another immediately after they appear in their line of view.
GH: it means good half, and players usually say it when the first half of a challenging match is over.
UTILITY
MOLLY: synonym to molotov. Can only be purchased by Terrorist side. This is basically, a homemade fire grenade, which can be used as an offensive tool, to flush someone out of the position, or as a defensive tool to buy time, while you’re waiting for the help to arrive. It deals damage per second to players standing in it, and it lasts for 8 seconds.
INCIN: shorten of incendiary grenade. You can only buy it on the Counter-Terrorist side. It has the same effects as a molly above.
FLASH: stands for flashbang. Commonly used by both sides. Flash deals no damage but it’s very powerful grenade if thrown correctly. Once it popped, a white screen will appear on the hit players, and they will also cover their faces. However, you can flash your teammates and yourself, so beware. Furthermore, the closer you throw the flashbang to someone’s face, the longer the white effect will last.
SMOKE: stands for the smoke grenade. A common grenade used by both sides to block off view for a 12 second period.
HE: commonly known as frag grenade. It explodes after 2 seconds dealing damage to everyone around it.
NADE: does not have a specific meaning. Usually, people use it once they are asking someone if they have any grenades left to use.
HERO AK: the term used when one player buys a gun while the other team members only half buy or eco rush. This player is then usually the one on whom the team relies to make the most kills in the round.
STRATEGIES
PUSH: order to advance to a certain point on the map. Commonly associated with term rush.
RUSH: fast play towards a certain bombsite, in order to get a bomb planted. Mostly used by Terrorists.
SAVE: sometimes, you and your teammates will find yourselves in very tough situations. The smartest idea would be to back off to the other part of the map in order to bring the weapons and equipment you saved to the next round in order to make an impact on the next round with the weapons you saved.
BUY: common term for both sides. Simply, it means to buy rifles and/or AWP.
ECO: stands for saving money in order to buy better weapons next round. This strategy is used by both sides. Mostly, on an eco round, players will stick with default pistols.
GLASSCANNON: a person who decides to buy an AWP without kevlar.
EXECUTE: throwing nades to certain places on the map in order to gain control. Usually, Terrorists do different executes, either for mid control, or even to get a bomb planted on the bombsite.
BOOST: Jumping on top of your teammate in order to get a height advantage on your enemies. Boost is commonly used to catch your opponents off guard.
ROTATION: a call to move from the position you were either defending or attacking.
BACKSTAB: when a player kills another player from behind.
BAIT: when a player does an incredibly risky maneuver to draw fire from the enemy team, so his or her team can spot the enemy and counter-attack.
CLUTCH: when a player manages to win while being in an extremely difficult situation.
BHOP: signifies the bunny hop, which is a skilled move that players use to traverse the map faster.
JIGGLE PEEK: a pro move players use to quickly take a peek around a wall to draw fire and see where the enemy is. It’s done by quickly alternating between the left and right mouse buttons.
CSGO WEAPONS
AWP: the sniper rifle some like to call the big green gun. Very expensive, but very lethal. Usually takes only one bullet to kill an opponent.
RIFLE: a term used either for an AK-47 or M4A4/M4A1-S. Standard rifles for T/CT side.
DEAGLE: the most powerful pistol in the game. It kills the opponent regardless if he invested in a helmet or not.
POP FLASH: one of the terms used for a flashbang grenade that blinds players who are in range when it explodes.
A lot of Reddit threads and YouTube videos have emerged about CSGO, all of them were titled “Is csgo dying?” In this article, we will go over some of the statistics and opinions about the current state of Counter-Strike:Global Offensive.
CS:GO PLAYER COUNT
If we take a closer look at SteamCharts, we can see a lot of green and red there. However, before we get straight into the numbers, you have to understand that CS:GO has the most competitive type of player, who invested a lot of hours into the game. On the other hand, there are also a lot of casual players, who will switch between CS:GO, Fortnite, PUBG and other popular titles. That is the main reason why most of the games have their ups and downs when it comes to player count.
PLAYERUNKNOWN’S BATTLEGROUNDS vs CS:GO
PUBG has a huge player base, with an all-time peak of over 3 millions players. On the other hand, CS:GO had over 850.000 players playing the game in the same time period. This means that PUBG has 3.5 times more players than Counter-Strike:Global Offensive.
GENRE
Counter-Strike:Global Offensive has been around for a long time now, and it does not offer anything new, especially in the last few years. However, battle royale games are a brand new thing, and they will attract a lot of casual players. But, battle royale games are not as competitive as CS:GO, once you have spent hours on a battle royale type of game, you will definitely get fed up with it, because most it is a repetitive process: jump down, loot, run, shoot. While Counter-Strike:Global Offensive is nothing like this, there are no similarities in each particular match.
From my personal experience, most of the PUBG players give up once they accumulated around 500-700 hours, however, there are players who spent over 6000 hours playing CS:GO. Personally, I have around 3000 hours in CS:GO, and I know every corner of it. However, I tried PUBG, and I found it very interesting at first, but as I said above it got very repetitive and I gave up once I had around 250 hours.
WHAT CAUSED CS:GO TO LOSE ALMOST HALF OF ITS PLAYERS
If you ask me, all the blame is on developers, Valve. They made a lot of unpopular decisions lately, and this cost them a lot of players.
OFFICIAL MATCHMAKING & CHEATING
Firstly, official matchmaking is still stuck with 64-tick servers, which are awful to play on, that is the main reason why a lot of players are switching from official matchmaking to the third-party organizations, such as Faceit and ESEA. Secondly, cheating is a very big problem, not only in Counter-Strike:Global Offensive but in the entire gaming community. CS:GO is using VAC(Valve anti-cheat system). To be honest, it totally sucks. There are a lot of cheaters in competitive games, and they are barely ever banned, which causes people to quit.
CONTENT/NO CONTENT
If you are a veteran in CSGO, you probably do not remember when was the last time something relevant was added. However, as of late, a new gun was added to the game, but it does not provide much of a comfort. We also received a new HUD update, called Panorama, and it brought more harm than good. A lot of people are experiencing fps drops because of it(me included, and I have a decent PC). What I simply can not understand is why go live with something that is not polished, and it is causing problems for most of the players. There has been 344 since the last operation. There are no plans on introducing new one anytime soon, so I am wondering, what are casual players supposed to do when they get bored on matchmaking?
TOXICITY
Developers never managed to solve this mystery. This caused a lot of competitive players to quit CS:GO. It feels like they never had quality support on this topic, as developers were taking no actions against toxic players. If they were to implement certain punishment in order to prevent trollers and toxic players, most of these types of players would probably think about their actions before they ruined the game for others.
Why not do something similar to Dota 2, place toxic and AFK players in the lower priority, and let them climb back with the similar type of players.
SKIN INDUSTRY
Ever since skins were introduced to Counter-Strike:Global Offensive, the game popularity was rising. A lot of gambling websites started popping up. They were mainly prioritized as skin jackpots or roulette websites. They have created a huge market for CS:GO skins, and a lot of casual and competitive type of players were gambling in one way or another. After a couple of cease and desist letters, most of these types of websites decided to seize their operations. But, a new type of gambling emerged afterward, case opening websites were gaining a lot of popularity. Websites like hellcase.com, datdrop.com were earning a lot of money, but after the latest trading update, a lot of these type of gambling websites shut down their services as well.
All that we are left with are trading websites. The most popular one is definitely cs.money. It seems like they are the only type of skins exchange that survived, mainly because of the 8 days trade ban after each traded skin.
SKIN GAMBLING MADE CS:GO EVEN MORE POPULAR
In 2016, skin gambling was very popular. There were a lot of YouTubers(mostly casual players) gambling skins on regular basis. There was a lot of money in this type of industry, and new gambling sites were appearing every single day. As most of these earned tons of money, they sponsored a lot of giveaways made by famous CS:GO streamers, which attracted even more players and viewers.
If we take PhantomLord as an example, he accumulated over 45.000 concurrent viewers while he was gambling. Mostly because he would make a random $1000 knife giveaways on regular basis. However, he got greedy as he started rigging percentages in order to attract players to the site because when he played it seemed easy to win. He might be one of the reasons why certain actions were taken against skin gambling websites, but the main one was definitely underage gambling.
Most popular skin in CS:GO, AWP Dragon Lore
COULD NEW CS:GO(SOURCE 2) TURN THINGS AROUND?
Lately, there have been a lot of rumors about a new CS game. CS:GO was released in late 2012, which makes him 6 years old now. The engine is relatively old, graphics are also kinda out-dated. The only logical explanation would be a new game with a new engine.
It would definitely be a refreshment to all the Counter-Strike enthusiast, a new game would probably attract over 1.5 million players from what I think.
CONCLUSION
Counter-Strike:Global Offensive is a huge title in the gaming world. A lot of people played either original Counter-Strike, or CS 1.6, Counter-Strike Source, or the last addition to the CS family CS:GO.
CS:GO could use some type of refreshment, mainly in the content department. As I mentioned above, the last mission was active almost a year ago. Furthermore, problems with cheaters and toxic players are still not solved, and they need to be addressed in the near future.
However, everything is not so dark for Counter-Strike:GO. The game has a very stable player count, almost every month they average around 300.000 players, which is a great number for a game that is becoming old. A lot of tournaments, leagues and big prize pools are also attracting a large number of professional teams, players and sponsors, and in the end viewers. Let’s not forget that the last major had over 1 million concurrent users watching the final match.
So no, in my personal opinion, I do not think that CS:GO is dying, or that it is going to die anytime soon. There are a lot of new games released, even on monthly basis, and logically some players will switch to those games, but eventually, they will come back to Counter-Strike:Global Offensive, because this is a very unique game. There is nothing sweeter than hitting a Juan-deag, or one tap with an AK-47, no other games can offer that. However, there is a lot of room for improvement, and I believe that something will be done in order to fight versus cheaters and toxic players.
Dota 2 can be simply defined as the game no one can master. If you’d like to learn how to play Dota 2 as a beginner without any experience in the genre of MOBA gaming, you’ll probably have a lot of questions right at the beginning. This Dota 2 Beginner Guide will teach you the basics of the game and help you to start with your first Dota 2 games.
Before we explain the actual game to you, we first look at the playing field, the Dota 2 map. This is, of course, the best way to learn the basics of the game as well as the mechanics involved if you want to bet on Dota 2.
Dota 2 Map Structure
The two teams start each in a corner of the map – either top right or bottom left – where the main building, “The Ancient” is located. From your own base, there are three routes to the opposing base, the so-called Lanes. These are marked red or green in the minimap. On these paths are various towers that protect your own and enemy base. These are marked on the map by red and green squares. Between the lanes is the forest, which contains a total of 12 neutral creep camps that are difficult to take down at the start. These are usually marked in the game by yellow triangles.
Near the top side of the Dota 2 map resides Roshan, a powerful creep which drops a special item upon death, the Aegis of the Immortal. This item revives your hero five seconds after death.
The Goal of Dota 2
The goal of the game in Dota 2 is, as in all other games of this genre, to destroy the main building of the opposing team. In order to reach this goal, on the one hand, one must destroy some enemy towers, which protect the way to the opposing main building and on the other hand protect your own towers.
Both teams start in their base at the beginning, each of which is in one corner of the map. There you can equip your hero with items (you can buy more later on).
Now your own team splits up into small subgroups. This is almost always done so that one player takes over the middle and other four players occupy the outer lanes. From your base and that of your opponent, after every 30 seconds, small monster groups known as creeps will start spawning for you. These creeps are mainly used by the player to seek cover in the landing phase. In doing so, you try to kill the opposing creeps in order to get as much gold and experience as possible. It is important to note that only the last hit counts. So you only get gold if you really get the killing blow. Depending on the role of your hero you want to get as many last hits as possible or secure them for your allies.
Choosing the Right Hero in Dota 2
Choosing the right hero in Dota 2 is not easy, especially as there are many different heroes who do not need to be unlocked. The total sum of Dota 2 heroes is over 120 which divided into three different categories: strength, agility, and intelligence. Each hero has these three attributes, but you get more bonuses for the hero’s primary attribute than others. A hero of the category “strength” thus benefits much more from items that bring strength than from intelligence. This classification into the attribute classes also gives an indication of the strengths of each hero: While strength heroes usually endure a lot, agility heroes quickly deal damage and move faster. Heroes from the Intelligence category often serve to support other heroes and master powerful spells.
In general, there is no “best” hero in Dota 2, it always depends on the particular game situation. However, one can distinguish between easy-to-play and hard-to-play Dota 2 heroes.
Items in Dota 2
Items are there to strengthen your hero. This can be a small Clarity Potion for 50 Gold that regenerates over time Mana or even a powerful Satanic that you can buy for costly 6150 Gold! Therefore, it is important for you to know how to effectively farm a lot of gold – but pay attention to the role of your hero. While Carrys have to accumulate a lot of gold and concentrate on farming until the end of the game, supporters will need to collect much less gold, as they are not as dependent on items but on their positioning to assist their teammates in fights.
Of course, you also need to know where to get which items. This is much easier in Dota 2 than in its predecessor, DotA. In DotA, there were more than half a dozen shops and in each of them, you got different items. In Dota 2 there is only one shop button that opens the shop window. This is located in the lower right corner of the interface. The big main shop is right in your base where you spawn at the beginning. There you will find every variety of items in the whole game and you can buy almost all the items in the game there. Some items, however, are only available in the Secret Shop, the location of the Secret Shops can be seen on the minimap.
Shops in Dota 2
There are two Secret Shops in the game, one on the Radiant side and other on the Dire side.
There you will find the most powerful and expensive items that are mainly purchased for the endgame. However, some items will require you to purchase recipes from your base while some don’t need recipes. For example, from Reaver (3200 Gold) and a couple of a Vitality Boosters (1100 gold each), you can build a Heart of Tarrasque. While to build Mjolnir (5600) you will first need to complete Maelstrom (2700 gold) which can be done from your general shop while the other item Hyperstone (2000 gold) will be needed from the Secret shop. An important point: you can always (!) Shop from the main shop. If you are not around or killed off, the items you have purchased are simply put in your camp and you can pick them up the next time you return to base or spawn.
Collecting Items From Roshan
You only get three special items from Roshan. This monster is located on the top side of the river. If you kill him, you will get the Aegis of the Immortal the first time, which will resurrect you at the spot of your death after 3 seconds without gold loss after your death. The Aegis stays in your inventory for five minutes, then it just disappears! Roshan reappears every 8-11 minutes after his death, and if you kill him for the second and third time, he will give you Cheese and Refresher Shard, respectively. If you use Cheese, you will be back in full health immediately and have full mana. While the Refresher Shard will remove the cooldown of almost all your spells and items as soon as you use it.
Tips and Suggestions
In Dota 2 you should try to avoid going back to the base to pick up your items. Especially at the beginning of the game you will find frequently needed items such as Boots of Speed or Magic Wand in the side shops that are in the top and bottom lane. You should also buy a Courier (only 50 gold) as early as possible in the game. This makes it possible to transport the items from the camp to allied heroes so that they do not have to leave their position and continue farming. You don’t have to worry about upgrading it since after three minutes the game will automatically do this for you.
At the beginning of each Dota 2 game you spawn in your base and should purchase the first items, then the members of your team should split-up in the different lanes – the first phase of the game, the so-called Laning stage begins as soon as the creeps spawn. Depending on your hero’s role, you should try to kill as many creeps as possible by getting last hits (Carry), assist your Carry in Farming (Support), or take on specific tasks such as killing enemy heroes or destroying the enemy’s towers.
From a certain level, you will need to leave your lane more and more often to kill (gank) enemy heroes or take part in big team fights. This phase usually does not start until the important heroes have reached at least level 6.
In all phases of the game, try to gain an advantage and leave the opponent in terms of experience and gold behind. If you have a sufficiently large lead worked, try to destroy the base of the opponent as soon as possible to end the game.
League of Legends is quite synonymous to its rival title Dota 2. The map structure, creep spawning, and the monsters are similar except the mechanics of both the games which heavily differ from each other. Learning how to play League of Legends is somewhat easy for the beginners. However, there are some key points in the game that every new player should be aware of. This League of Legends for Beginners Guide will not only comprehensively explain the role of every class of champions in the game, but also help you pick the best LoL odds in the betting industry.
Champions
Unlike many games, In League of Legends, you just have to control one character or champion, so it’s even more important to know the characters comprehensively. So, before you start a game you should either test out the champion in a game against bots (AI opponents) or at least read through the spell to have an idea of what he/she can do.
If you want to learn a new champion later, it makes sense to search the internet for guides on the various sites to get an impression of how to perfectly play the champion.
Classes
Depending on that, champions can be subdivided into the numerous different classes. So, if you want to understand the meta game and discussions in different forums, you should be able to know and distinguish these terms.
Carry
Carry is a game-changing champion. Of course, every champion is game-deciding in his own way, but carries are the ones whom everyone looks at. The word “to carry” means to wear, meaning the champion is there to carry his team and lead to victory.
LoL Carriers
In principle, a carry can be anyone, whether Blitzcrank, Gragas, Malzahar, Ashe or Corki. Therefore, a distinction is actually made here as follows: A carry is a Damage Dealer (DD), which is divided into AP Carry, or AD Carry. Champions like Malzahar, Swain or Vladimir are so-called AP-Carries. That is, they deal more magic damage than others and can quickly eliminate the opposing team. AP stands for Ability Power, which means that they scale with Ability Power (or their spells). They are also often dubbed as casters. AD Carries are champions like Ashe, Corki or Ezreal. They deal significantly more physical damage and scale very well with attack damage, meaning their damage comes mostly from auto attacks.
Supports
In League of Legends, supports are champions who support or heal their team through specific abilities and LoL items. These include above all Janna, Taric, Sona, and Soraka.
LoL Supports
There are a few more supporters, but in principle, these are the best. They each have healing spells and shields to support their team.
Supports usually spend their gold on tactical items like buying wards and get Map control for their team.Furthermore, supports take no minion kills, meaning they support their AD-Carry in the bottom lane and let him take all the Last Hits.
Tank
After supports and carry, we go to the kings of the top lane, namely the tanks or off-tank. The term off-tank is referred to the anti-carry, such as Mundo, Akali or Maokai.
LoL Tanks
It is essential to get as much farm as possible because often the top lane can decide the fate of the game. Especially Jarvan IV and Irelia are of course in the current Meta. At the same time, you cannot push too far, because the opposing jungler can come from behind, and take advantage of your careless positioning.
You can also think of a “tank” as a champion that can absorb the damage of the enemy and somehow attract the fire of the opponents. For example, Rammus, Shen, Cho’Gath or Malphite tanks. Their abilities make them accustomed to initiate a team fight and protect the team. The direct translation here illustrates the whole thing: they are “tanks”.
Champion Mechanics
Most champions need mana to use their spells. However, this does not apply to everyone, so in the following is briefly explained what you have to pay attention to:
Katarina, Garen, Tryndamere, Vladimir
These champions do not use mana or anything like that. Their spells are completely free (Vladimir has two spells that cost lives). They are limited only by their cooldown.
Mordekaiser, Vladimir, Dr. Mundo
Spells (partly) cost lives in these three champions. If you kill yourself with a spell because you have so little life, the spell cannot be performed until you regenerate the required health.
Renekton
This champion uses anger. His abilities also do not cost anything, but they generate rage and if you have over 50 rage your spells are boosted. He also gets rage with Auto Attacks.
Rumble
Rumble creates heat through its fire magic. As soon as he has over 50 heat, each spell deals out more damage, but if it comes to 100 heat it stops for a few seconds and deals a little more damage with its auto attack.
Akali, Kennen, Shen, Lee Sin
The three ninjas and the blind monk use energy. They have 200 energy and regenerate mana a lot quicker than the other Champions.
AD Carries
What do you have to learn when playing an AD-Carry? Well, in principle there is not much to pay attention while playing the AD Carry, but of course, there are a few things that will be explained below.
As soon as the game begins, it will be standard for you to go to the bot lane with a support who gives you all the last hits. On the other hand, if you go down to the lane with someone else in the bot lane, you cannot guarantee that you will get your last hits.
No matter if you go to the Duo-lane or Solo-lane, you have to pay attention to the minion in both ways. At the same time take care not to get harassed too hard. This requires some practice, especially as there are some champs who can quite possibly nuke you to zone you out and effectively keep the lane to themselves. Therefore, it is essential to know your champion inside out. Speaking of playing an AD carry, you have to be better in many situations, especially on the solo lane, than your opponent.
Caster
Caster is the one who goes to the mid lane. As a caster, it is much easier to farm than AD-Carry. The main reason is that you have a solo lane and you do not have to compete against two opponents. In addition, after a short time, you have the opportunity to farm with your spells. This gives you the opportunity to zone your opponent if you are either better than him or if you have a stronger champion and are superior to your opponent.
The fact that you have the solo lane also makes you much more vulnerable to ganks since it is difficult to secure the lane with wards there.
Of course, the enemy is just as prone to ganks as you are, so you can always ask for a gank if the opponent is too close to your own tower. Accordingly, it is vitally important not to use all of your spells for farming, as you will be fast at the enemy’s tower and will be an easy target for enemy ganks. However, if the creeps are pushing into the tower, you should use the spells to clear the wave and get the Last Hits.
Support
As a support, you have undoubtedly the simplest job in the game, nevertheless, there are also some things that have to be considered.
As a support player, it is only possible to go with the AD Carry on the bot lane. Here you let him get all minion kills and support whereas possible. Since you do not get any minion kills, it is essential to invest your gold in wards. In principle, you do not have to do more when playing this role. If sometimes you have enough money to buy an item that is nice, but getting the map control with your wards should be the first priority.
Janna, Sona, Soraka, Taric, Alistar, and Lux are some examples of great support champions.
Jungler
Jungler role in itself is really not difficult, but if you want to optimize it and really master it, the whole thing looks completely different and you really have to know a lot.
LoL Junglers
To effectively jungle you have to look at each champion’s speed, invasion, survivability, path / build, and ganking, and then decide if it’s worth chasing with him at all and then building on his strengths.
Often time in the League of Legends competitive scene, junglers are the ones which setup the teamfights. Jungler’s high farm-rate and level advantage over other champions makes it an excellent choice to setup the ganks.
The League kicked off at the start of the year. The official Overwatch League has been created and managed by the developer of the game: Blizzard Entertainment. On its inaugural night, the League attracted an average of 350,000 simultaneous viewers per game (more than 4 million during the entire first-day broadcast), followed the streams of the three inaugural matches.
For fans of eSports who came home or were present at the Blizzard Arena in Los Angeles, the impression was the same: SUCCESS. Impressive structure (all matches were played according to the schedule, the facilities include a commentary booth and crowd seats), clean transmission without crashes or failures, and even graphical news on the transmission to facilitate the follow-up of the dispute for those who are new to the game.
But behind all the opening hype of the Overwatch League, there are reasons to believe. Blizzard needs to make sure that one of the most played games in the world will go into the eSports scene to look at the top, and should not be disappointing any time soon.
History of the Overwatch League
Overwatch was released in May 2016. That means it is practically a baby in the gaming world. DOTA, Counter-Strike, League of Legends, StarCraft, are all games that, in addition to being older, already have a solidified history in eSports.
The big difference of the game of Blizzard is that the developer thought about this entry in the competitive scenario from the beginning of the project of the game. It explains a little of all the structure that the game itself (although still needs some adjustments) provides an impressive transmission and championship format.
Blizzard Making Big Investments!
To make it happen the way you always dreamed, Blizzard spared no money for you or anyone interested in the game development. For each of the 12 franchises participating in the Overwatch League, the developer charged no less than $ 20 million. The value initially scared the eSports market. But the planning presented justified all the investment and especially pleased the athletes, who will receive a minimum fixed salary of US $ 50 thousand every year.
It does not stop there. Each of the two regions (Europe and North America), which hold access tournaments during the preseason, rewards $ 100,000 for its champions. In the top tier league, the total prize pool (including mid-season and placement awards) is $ 3.5 million, with $ 1 million being the prize pool for the winning team.
Professionalism and Structure for Athletes
In addition to the high salary, Blizzard included in the franchise agreement other clauses that guarantee more comfort and safety to athletes. Each player’s contract is a minimum of one year in duration, with the possibility of renewal the following year, and also obliges teams to offer accommodation, health insurance, retirement, and other benefits based on results.
Overwatch League Community
Blizzard’s planning also involves consumers in the league. In addition to the full range of tournament and team merchandise (that can be purchased physically or in-game), a developer partnership with Twitch (one of the companies licensed to stream matches) will allow viewers with in-game accounts Blizzard Battletag to receive some type of rewards. The rewards include tokens for the purchase of skins in the game. Although this bonus was not inaugurated in the first week of competition, it is clear that Blizzard’s interest in retaining the audience as soon as possible, either by taste or bonus.
Adopting the American Business Model
The franchise model used by Blizzard is not a new one. Major American sporting events run almost all on the same model. The league opens up space for potential players interested in having a team, to buy a place in the tournament. From there they are obliged to follow all the rules and values stipulated by the contracts. Companies such as Kraft Group and even big organizations from within the eSports scene like Cloud 9, became owners of the teams, without being able to enter their names in the teams.
Overwatch League 2018
In this model, as in the NFL, NBA, and NHL, by franchise determination, franchises must represent cities. It is something completely new in the eSports scene, accustomed to teams following the flags of large organizations (Cloud 9, Sk Gaming, and Fnatic, for example) with teams of different modalities. With this, Blizzard seeks to facilitate the identification of fans with teams and their stars, as well as creating their own environment, with their own fans, products, transmission, and maintaining total control of eSports.
All this scenario built by Blizzard caught the attention of investors from the sports world. Some of the Overwatch League franchise owners also own franchises in American sports leagues. Here is a list of the renowned owners which have their teams in different domains:
- Kraft Group, the owner of Boston Uprising, also owns the New England Patriots (NFL).
- Revolution (MLS), as well as Comcast Spectacor, owner of the Philadelphia Fusion, owns the Philadelphia Flyers (NHL).
- Kroenke Sports & Entertainment, owner of the Los Angeles Gladiators, owns the Los Angeles Rams (NFL) and Denver Nuggets (NBA).
Other investors in the sports world have invested in the large eSports organizations that have acquired franchises in the Overwatch League.
Drafting Competitive Players
It is very common within the competitive games the existence of rankings, created from the performance of each player (whether professional, casual or amateur). If we compare football, for example, the way players are selected is much more “fair” and democratic. If you are skillful in the game and can rise in the rankings, it will probably catch the attention of the teams that are always following the evolution of the classification (updated in real time). Therefore, every player has an equal chance to win the attention of the scouts for merit, unlike the barriers that exist in the world of football.
In addition to showing the talent in the rankings, you can also participate in the Overwatch League from a selection made by the scouting system. Once selected through the rankings to play in the Open Division, Blizzard performs the Overwatch League Contenders, a tournament that predates the regular season and allows well-qualified players to set up a team to participate and show their value to the franchises.
Overwatch League Format
Regular Season
This stage consists of four five-week stages, with three games on four days of the week (Wednesday to Saturday) and a ten-day break between each of the stages. Each team plays 40 simple matches during the season; 20 against teams in their division, and 20 out of their division.
At the end of each stage, a “mini-playoff” based on the rating results of the teams define the winner of the stage, which takes the prize of US $ 100,000 (the prize for the runner-up is $ 25,000 USD). The teams are also paid based on their overall standings at the end of the regular season, ranging between $ 25,000 USD and $ 300,000 USD.
Overwatch League Playoffs and Grand Finals
The best team in each region guarantees an automatic berth in the Grand Finals, while the next four in the ranking play in the playoffs for the semi-finals. The prizes for the final stage are:
- 1st – $ 1 million USD
- 2nd – $ 400 thousand USD
- 3rd and 4th – $ 100 thousand USD
- 5th and 6th – $ 50 thousand USD
Overwatch League – A brief explanation
Overwatch is a single-person shooter (FPS) of a simple dispute between two teams by match. Each team consists of 6 members. Teams can face each other in 4 types of maps/objectives.
Attack:
The team that is advancing forward to capture target points present on the map. The objective of the defending side is to stop the attack
Escort:
The cargo is escorted by the attacking team to a certain point on the map in a limited time. A fixed path is set for the cargo to move. The cargo moves when any player of the attacking team is close to it. The defending team tries to stop the cargo from reaching the marked point.
Escort/ Attack:
The cargo is to be captured by the attacking team and needs to be taken to the destination.
Control:
This mode of Overwatch is played in the best of three format. Here each team needs to take 100% control of a point to achieve victory.
Teams are formed by a free choice of game heroes. Each character has a skill that determines their role in the game, but it is up to the players to define how many of each role and how they will use them during the game.
The functions are divided into:
Attack:
- Offensive heroes are the cause of team damage. Your goal: to seek, confront and destroy the enemy.
Defense:
- Defensive heroes control the battlefield, stopping enemy attacks and fortifying locations. As a defense hero, your goal is to prevent the progress of the opposing team.
Tank:
- Heroes with tank function resist damage and destroy fortified positions, such as grouped enemies and obstruction points. When you are a tanker, it is you who leads the charge.
Support:
- Supporting heroes protect and strengthen their allies as they are able to heal and defend them, increase their speed and power of damage, and strengthen vital utility. As a support, you are the basis of your team’s sovereignty.
Most of you have heard about Nikhil “forsaken” Kumawat. He decided to cheat on a LAN tournament, and logically he was caught, and eventually banned from competing in the Counter-Strike:Global Offensive. In this article, we will talk about cheating in CS:GO, how easy it is to cheat on a LAN game, and potential cheaters in the professional CS:GO scene.
Nikhil “forsaken” Kumawat
Nikhil “forsaken” Kumawat
Not only did this 23-year-old player screw himself over, but he also screwed an entire country, India. Simply by cheating in a professional CS:GO event.
Not so long ago, OpTic Gaming organization decided to pick up an Indian team to compete in the Asian region, and it backfired massively. He doomed an entire region, as OpTic decided to cut ties with the entire roster, only a few days after the incident. You can only imagine, how must his teammates feel about this situation, as they were on the rise, and all of the sudden they are without a contract, and without an organization to play for.
VAC (Valve anti-cheat system) IS VERY BAD
For most of his professional career, forsaken has been called a cheater. He was always doing weird and random stuff, as most of the times, he was able to get perfect timing, rotations, and prefires. It can be clearly seen from the video I will post in this article.
However, VAC was not able to detect his blatant cheat. Luckily, eXTREMESLAND(a tournament where forsaken was caught cheating) used, alongside VAC, another anti-cheat system, B5 platform anti-cheat. B5 was triggered after a suspicious
Valve Anti Cheat
activity, and that action alerted the admins to check out forsaken’s PC. After admin alt-tabbed, he spotted a suspicious program running in the background, which was quickly closed and deleted by Nikhil. The support team at eXTREMESLAND was able to recover the file, but they were unable to get it up and running again. All of this evidence combined led to the forsaken ban, and finally, entire OpTic Gaming India roster was disqualified, followed by disbanding of the roster.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJ-m-Y9dbbM
(forsaken blatant cheat, credit goes to @vLADOPARD2)
IS IT POSSIBLE TO CHEAT ON LAN?
In my personal opinion, it is very easy to cheat on LAN tournament. We do not have to go far to prove that, we just have to look at forsaken. The guy was probably not very bright, and he was using bad cheating software, created by a random programmer. Now you can imagine, if someone has a lot of money, like most of the tier 1 players have, they might invest in a professional cheat coder, and get themselves a perfect cheat.
HOW TO SNEAK THE CHEAT ON THE LAN EVENT
All of the professional CS:GO players are taking care of their personal hardware. For instance, every player attending a EPICENTER 2018 will bring his own keyboard, mouse, and mousepad. A good cheat coder can easily implement a chip into the mouse, or even place it as a hotkey in the keyboard. And how can anyone spot that, it would be impossible to spot that.
Cheats can also be sneaked in through the Steam screenshots, or even through the workshop maps, as there are numerous videos proving that.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KiKhfp2d8A4 (how to cheat on LAN, credit goes to @timeisbutawindow)
HOW TO STOP CHEATING IN CS:GO, ESPECIALLY ON LAN
This is really easy to answer, but it takes a lot of money. LAN is a more controlled event once you compare it to the online match. If someone is playing in the controlled environment, he would probably think twice about cheating. There is one simple solution to prevent hacking on LAN.
DO NOT ALLOW PERSONAL HARDWARE
In my personal opinion, every tournament organizer should get a list of all the hardware professional players attending a certain tournament use. After that, tournament staff should get them a brand new, un-opened gear. This limits the possibility to sneak in the cheat on the mouse or keyboard to 0. If funding is low in a tournament, there are a lot of sponsors in the CS:GO, main ones are gaming brands, who can help out with gaming hardware, so funding this project would not be as expensive as some of you may think.
FRESH CS:GO ACCOUNT
CS:GO cheating has unfortunately always been an issue amongst competitive players. As I mentioned above, it is not that hard to sneak in a cheat through a screenshot or workshop map. Do not allow that, if every player gets a clean account, there is no way he will be able to get a cheat on the PC. Of course, there is always a possibility that a player can download cheat, but this is where admins come in place. It is not that hard to control PCs on LAN event, as I stated above, LAN is a controlled environment, and tournament hosts are barely using that to provide transparent gameplay to all the participants.
COULD SOME OF THESE PROFESSIONAL PLAYERS CHEAT?
There are a lot of YouTube videos about some of the best players in the world, mainly about their CS:GO cheats and crazy aim locks through the walls. However, it might be a random line-up which can occur if someone has a good crosshair placement, but it could also be triggered by a software.
Robin “flusha” Rönnquist
(Robin “flusha” Rönnquist)
So-called, Senor Vac, is a guy who will always be remembered as a blatant cheater. However, some of his fans will defend him and say that his in-game IQ and ability to predict someone’s movement is out of this world. But his aim locks through smokes are very hard to call natural. I will leave a link down below for you to see and conclude if he is cheating.
(Robin “flusha” Rönnquist)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKdy4nDd-ik
(flusha VAC moments, credit goes to @exillion)
Richard “shox” Papillon
A French legend. Richard has been around CS:GO for a long time now. Even though he is not as blatant as flusha is, there are a lot of fishy clips about this guy. See for yourself.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Fh9hwJimKM
(shox’s suspicious 4k versus LG, credit goes to @CS:GO Highlights)
Kristian “k0nfig” Wienecke
Kristian has been around for a while now. However, he has not been on his past level lately, ever since he joined OpTic Gaming, he is struggling. Before that, he was rated as the 14th best player in 2017. Could third-party software make k0nfig look better than he really is? You have to see this crazy aim lock, as there is no way he is able to predict a player there, especially through the smoke. A very suspicious play.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WYllUMj87d8
(k0nfig suspicious pre-fire, credit goes to @unn)
These are some of the most popular “cheaters” in CS:GO. The list of potential cheaters is very long, and there is no space to fit all of them in. There are also some rumors that some of the guys I mentioned above have VAC bans on their smurf accounts, which makes them even more suspicious.
CONCLUSION
Valve anti-cheat system(VAC) is getting outdated. It does not offer any security when it comes to cheating in CS:GO, as it can be spotted in many casual and competitive games. I really think that Valve should do something about their anti-cheat software, as in my personal opinion there are better options out there. For instance, Faceit anti-cheat seems to be doing a solid job against cheaters.
Events hosts could also try harder to make LAN events more secure, with some of the options I mentioned above, because cheating is becoming more common in every sphere of Counter-Strike:Global Offensive.
23 May, 2019
As Seen On
