- Twistzz commented on the “abysmal” state of the North American CS:GO competitive scene
- He stated this is due to players “moving to VALORANT because they just want the easy money”
- Many professionals strongly disagreed with Twistzz's statement
Professional CS:GO player Russel “Twistzz” Van Dulken commented on the “abysmal” state of the NA scene, stating many younger players switch to VALORANT for the “easy money”.
The State of NA CS:GO According to Twistzz
Russel “Twistzz” Van Dulken is a Canadian-born professional CS:GO player, currently competing under the banner of FaZe Clan. While playing in the PGL Antwerp CS:GO Major, the 22-year-old had the chance to see what the state of the NA region was, particularly regarding the exodus of talent to VALORANT.
In an interview with HLTV's North American branch Dust2, the player that newer players are migrating from CS:GO to VALORANT for purely financial reasons. “I mean, we saw so many new players moving to VALORANT because they just want the easy money,” Twistzz said. ”They see a new game and they see everyone is trying to get into it and it's easy money. I think the switch is for the money and the work ethic wasn’t there in CS to become better.”
Perhaps Twistzz's harsh criticisms come because the NA CS:GO scene has seen a rapidly declining number of players over the past few years. There is in general a deficit of new organizations and players coming to professionally compete and Twistzz described the current state of the NA CS:GO scene as “abysmal”.
After Dignitas put their entire roster for transfer, there are only three big organizations left competing at the top level: Evil Geniuses, Team Liquid, and Complexity. Twistazz himself is currently the only North American player competing at the highest level as part of a European team.
Many Disagree with Twistzz
In contrast, the NA VALORANT scene seems to be growing each day. A lot of this is due to the influx of players coming from the first or second tier of NA CS:GO. Some of them have had issues with Twistazz’s comments, like Cloud9’s in-game leader Anthony “vanity” Malaspina. He hinted that many of these players feel pushed out of the CS:GO scene. “Went from looking for apartments to get better ping to being orgless within a 2 week period,” he wrote on Twitter.
Matthew Elmore, The Guard coach, echoed vanity’s statement, albeit in a harder way, responding sarcastically to Twistazz. He brought up the Louvre Agreement that partnered specific organizations with prominent TOs. Elmore seems to feel that tournament organizers like ESL and FACEIT played an active part in the fall of NA CS:GO‘s tier two and tier three ecosystems.
From 2015 to 2020, the ESL operated 12 seasons of a North American Pro League. However, the organization took away the path for tier two or tier three NA teams to qualify via qualifiers or ESEA Premier promotion in the final seasons of 2020, a fact that seems to support Elmore and many other CS:GO pros’ responses.
