ESL Pro League celebrated its 20th season in 2024, kicking off on Tuesday, Sept. 3 with a massive 32 Counter-Strike 2 coming from far and wide to compete for the lion’s share of a $750,000 USD prize pool.

BLAST Premier points were also up for grabs here, but eyes were on Malta this month as this was likely the last Pro League as we know it in this format. ESL, among the other big Counter-Strike 2 tournament organizers, will be adjusting their events for 2025 and beyond thanks to the open circuit change-up.

The 20th ESL Pro League final went long into the Maltese evening as ultimate surprise package Eternal Fire refused to go gently into the good night. Ultimately though, it was NAVI who proved superior in the topsy-turvy marathon that saw Aleksib finally won a best-of-five Counter-Strike final.

With this being their fourth consecutive grand final appearance at big event, Major winners NAVI were the runaway favorites of this matchup. They would have likely been the expected winners against most sides considering their recent showings, but this was especially the case against world number ten Eternal Fire, the Turkish outfit that has been revitalized recently in a far cry from the 21-28th finish from the last Pro League season back in spring.

It’s now been a year since Counter-Strike 2’s official release, and with the game still lagging so far behind Global Offensive both in terms of content and fidelity, pros are now also getting more vocal about their criticism of the game and Valve.

Now, it was ropz and NiKo who spoke out in interviews given to BLAST ahead of the tournament organizer’s Fall Finals competition, and neither of them minced words about the state of CS2.

The BLAST circuit nears its end with the Fall Final marking the last chance for Counter-Strike 2 teams to stake their claim ahead of the Shanghai Major later this year. There’s more than money at stake this time, with a spot in Singapore’s World Final up for grabs this week.

Here’s everything you need to know about the BLAST Premier: Fall Final, including attending teams, full schedule, and where you can catch the action live yourself.

In an effort to “remain competitive at the highest level,” one of the best teams in CS history, Astralis, is picking up Casper “cadiaN” Møller to serve as its new in-game leader. CadiaN previously played for Team Liquid, where he moved after a long tenure at Heroic.

The transfer was announced by Astralis on Sept. 17, saying that the team always had the ambition to “unite the best Danish Counter-Strike talent,” as well as to be a high-level professional team competing with the best of the best. CadiaN’s new position as Astralis’ IGL comes as a replacement for another player, Alexander “br0” Bro, who actively played for the team since early March of this year.

Reigning ESL Pro League champions MOUZ have shockingly exited Season 20 without a playoff appearance following a less-than-impressive group stage this week.

In doing so, their exit—combined with several other upsets in groups—has meant one-half of the finals bracket is stacked with top squads. MOUZ’s near defeat in their opener against Aussie CS2 minnows Rooster was put down to an off day, but instead, it should have been a precursor to what came next. The champs dropped their upper bracket series to Brazilian squad Imperial before back-to-back losses against Complexity ended their title defense early.

Danil “donk” Kryshkovets truly came alive at IEM Katowice 2024, where he decimated tier-one opposition on-stage in the Spodek Arena and cemented his name with one of the greatest individual Counter-Strike 2 performances ever. Naturally, CS2 players are rushing to copy the prodigy—right down to his CS2 in-game settings.

Here are donk’s mouse, video, crosshair, and viewmodel settings in CS2.

There are many personality tests floating on the internet, but nothing reveals more about your deepest, darkest secrets than your gaming habits. You spend a lot of time playing Counter-Strike, so that’s already quite telling, but we can go further by analyzing your favorite CS map.

You may not like the results, but dozens of nonexistent psychology papers have confirmed these findings! Here’s what your favorite CS map says about you as a person.

Ever since its launch, Counter-Strike 2 has been incessantly compared to its predecessor, CS:GO, especially in terms of server performance and responsiveness. Aleksib, a CS2 pro, called on players to return to the old game to see just how good it was. One fan did and had interesting findings.

In a thread shared yesterday, Sept. 7, a Reddit user showcased how quickly the game reacts to headshots in a locally hosted server. CS2 took about 19 frames to register the shot and show blood and about 31 frames to register the kill, whereas CS:GO did the same a whole lot quicker, registering the shot on the first frame and starting to display the kill only eight frames in.

Streamer dreams are more than mere memes, as DRILLAS’ Cinderella run through the RMR qualifiers showed. You can still take notable pros and form a mixed team to make a run towards the biggest event in Counter-Strike esports—but only in a solitary region for now.

Just a glance at the numbers and the interest generated by DRILLAS’ run through the Middle Eastern qualifiers to the Shanghai CS2 Major’s APAC RMR makes it clear there’s still hunger for stories like this one. Professional casters and an observer joining the fun as ohnePixel’s stream skyrocketed to over 75,000 concurrent viewers for the decisive game? You won’t get this anywhere else. Literally, as it turns out.