The post EWCF & ESA ANNOUNCE 3-YEAR PARTNERSHIP first appeared on Esports Awards.

“Honoured, I’m honoured to be sharing the stage amongst all the top organizations and holding this [Esports Award] feels amazing,” said  Naman “MortaL” Mathur, co-founder of S8UL Esports, moments after walking off stage in Las Vegas having received the Esports Content Creator of the Year, presented by Xfinity award on behalf of his organisation.

For MortaL, collecting awards from us was becoming a regular habit. In 2022 S8UL won the Content Group of the Year award, at the first ever Mobies earlier this year the group was honoured with the Global Impact on Mobile Gaming award and just a few weeks ago took home the Esports Content Creator of the Year, presented by Xfinity award.

The success at our events mirrors the success S8UL has had over the past few years, quickly becoming one of the largest content groups in the esports world. You may not be overly familiar with their content, but in their home region of India, the members of the group are quickly achieving mainstream celebrity status thanks to the content they produce, which is watched by millions.

The group was founded when MortaL’s Team SouL merged with 8bit to form a content and esports group that was focused on the mobile scene in India. MortaL was a pro PUBG Mobile player, achieving some significant success in the scene and winning major events, but he started to transition into the content creation world where he found massive success, and that put a strain on his time as a pro.

“It was a bit difficult for the team, along with me, to perform because I had to travel a lot,” said MortaL. “What me and my team decided was [that] we can give it a try and focus on content. Let’s focus on building S8UL as a content team and we’ll obviously have a [pro] team which will be playing esports separately. And it worked for us.”

The idea worked, with MortaL focusing more on the content side of things and taking a backseat in the esports division. Along with many other creators who are a part of the group, the views and followers started to pour in and soon S8UL became the brand for competitive mobile content, and just content surrounding the stars involved. It’s a similar model to how FaZe Clan found success, with the original stars becoming major influencers while the pro side of things going in its own direction, still overseen by the big names who founded it.

But for MortaL himself this success in the content world, and having to co-manage a massive business meant he had little time to play PUBG Mobile, especially at the high level that he was known for. Now his role is well outside of playing in top tournaments on a regular basis, although he would like to return when he gets the chance.

“I totally miss being a pro player,” said MortaL. “ It was just a few months back I was on social media saying it feels so bad that I’m not able to perform right now, and I cannot play being a pro player because of so many obligations, because of travelling a lot.”

All the success that S8UL has found has made them an influential voice in the mobile gaming scene. From highlighting new talent to pushing games forward and trying to build up the mobile and Indian esports scenes on the global level the group has quickly become a name you need to know and listen to.

The West doesn’t hear about the thriving mobile esports scene as much as it should, but it is an industry that is thriving with massive player counts and impressive tournaments. S8UL is leading the charge when it comes to widening the global awareness of the Indian region, and it’s very likely it will keep growing and growing.

“Gaming right now, it’s just the beginning in India,” said MortaL. “That’s the best part, you know? We still gotta dig deep in India, but it’s just the beginning now.”

With two Esports Awards and a Mobie in the S8UL trophy cabinet, the group is already one of the most successful ever when it comes to our award shows and its impact on the industry should not be understated. When it comes to mobile gaming and content creation in India there is no bigger brand, and the group has been responsible for growing the mobile esports fan base massively. Now as the group becomes more known in the Western world, it only feels like a matter of time before it becomes a truly global player in the industry, and probably picks up a few more awards while doing so.

The post How MortaL Went From PUBG Mobile Pro To Megastar Influencer With S8UL first appeared on Esports Awards.

“Our team are trying to solve two Rubik’s Cubes at once while having another one thrown at them that also hasn’t been solved yet,” says Ali Rezvan, head of broadcast for the Esports Awards, revealing what it is like behind the scenes when the broadcast is live.

When the show is on air it takes hundreds of people, this year over 300, to make sure things are running smoothly. From the broadcast team in the production trucks to the staff in the room making sure the presenters and winners make it onto the stage and of course, the team making sure attendees have everything they need to have a good time. While you may only see a handful of staff during the show, there is an army of other folks behind the scenes making sure everything works.

“I would say that for every fire that the audience sees there are probably 100 of them that we’ve had to put out before it makes it to the broadcast, to make sure that the final product is good and watchable,” says Rezvan.

But essentially the event is a live TV show, and live TV never goes to plan, just ask the BBC News team! Sure the hosts may have had to fill time every so often, but with some of the best broadcasters in the industry on stage leading the show that’s not an issue, although they did go in some strange directions at times. Even if we say so ourselves, this year’s broadcast was one of the smoothest yet, and the event overall was without a doubt one of the best we have ever put on.

To be able to pull it all off the work started months ago, with Rezvan and his core team essentially moving to Vegas to get everything in place. Compared to previous years this was the event that took the most pre-preperation for the broadcast to run smoothly. For the first time, we were in a venue that was not designed to host a live broadcast, meaning it had to be set up from scratch.

“A nightclub is not a built-for-broadcast venue,” says Rezvan. “There had to be a lot of adaptations that had to be made to allow us to hold a broadcast in that venue. It wouldn’t have been possible without not only the team at Zouk, but also the teams at The Switch and Infinite Reality Studios. You know, everything from fibre infrastructure to network to audio to video, everything had to be laid down.”

Choosing a venue that requires almost a complete rewiring may not have seemed like an obvious choice, but this year we wanted to make sure that both the viewers at home and the attendees had the best experience possible, and that led us to Zouk. It may have meant we had to put more work in to make the broadcast work to the level we wanted, but it was all worth it to make sure the people on the ground had the best time possible.

“We can go into a TV studio or we can go into a venue that is built for TV, and everything is there, everything’s great, but sometimes the attendee experience isn’t as good,” says Rezavn. “Or we can do what we did, which was go into a venue that was attendee-first focused and adapt that venue into a TV ready, studio, which I’m happy to say that we did, and we were somehow able to pull off in the amount of time that we had.”

Having to start from scratch also meant we could try some new things, and having the F1 in town just before us also provided some fun opportunities. The team that did the drone footage for the Grand Prix extended their licences to provide aerial footage for the awards and the world record attempt, which would not have looked anywhere near as good without them.

“Very quickly, we realised the absolute monstrosity of what we were trying to do [with the world record,]” says Rezvan. “That’s when, in the planning stages, we knew the aerial photography had to be a very large part of how we shoot this. When you go back and watch the stream, we only really take the game full screen a couple of times, the majority of the shots are arial or from the ground because of how big the screen was.”

With all the preparation, rehearsals and expertise of the team who put the awards together, things went smoothly on the night, resulting in what we think is the best show we have ever put on. There are things to be improved for next year and we have learnt a lot, but one thing is for sure, we put on a great event last week and topping it next year is going to be a tough task.

“I think overall, the show was a huge success in the areas that we wanted it to be,” says Rezvan. “This year was a really big turning point for us in refocusing the awards on what it was but also what it can be, which ultimately is one of the only crossover products in esports that fans at home and attendees can get. And I think that this year we massively succeeded in creating a show that belongs to the industry, but also had a moment for everyone.”

We would like to thank all the partners and staff who helped make the show happen, including; Infinite Reality, The Switch, Pendulum Works, Esports Foundry, Luna Remote Systems & Stage House LV.

The post How The Esports Awards 2023 Was Built first appeared on Esports Awards.

Compared to traditional sports you would expect that getting data in esports would be simple, after all, it’s already all electronic so collecting the data should be just a case of recording it all. But in reality, implementing the systems to collect and analyse the data is incredibly complex, and one company has taken up the challenge to become a leader in the esports data space.

“When you play games 1000s of data points are triggered and it all happens in real time, and this data is super relevant for a lot of use cases,” says Moritz Maurer, CEO of GRID Esports. “It’s an important element in coaching and talent scouting. It’s something that is used to improve the broadcast experience, drive more engagement make esports more accessible. The regulated betting sector relies on official data heavily. And if you want to go anywhere and find out results, someone has to facilitate that.”

GRID Esports was founded by Maurer in 2018 and aimed to improve how data is used in esports. What started out as a small company hoping to make an impact on how the industry operates has now grown into a valuable resource for many of the biggest publishers and leagues in the world. GRID now has almost 100 employees, multiple deals covering top games, and is a finalist for the Esports Supporting Service of the Year award.

Five years after starting out GRID now works with publishers such as Riot Games, Krafton and most recently Ubisoft, providing data infrastructure, a variety of systems and data analysis for their top esports. While this data is obviously useful for the publishers and devs, it also benefits fans in a number of ways you might not expect.

“There are many ways in which you might interact with GRID data already,” says Maurer. “Be it for different coaching solutions that are powered by it or be browsing websites, like for example GosuGamers to inform yourselves of recent results or watch a live score centre. This is all powered by us. If you go on a bookmaker and you bet on it, the odds are ultimately driven by the official data that we cater to. And if you’re watching a broadcast and we see a cool sponsorship activation with a gold difference graph or win probability, and in many cases, this is exactly what we unlock for the fan. So as a fan, you don’t interact with GRID directly. But what we do ultimately powers a lot of the things that are part of the experience.”

It has been a long journey for Maurer and his core team, who have been working to make sure that the wealth of data that is available in esports is being used to its maximum potential. While they are still aiming to do even more, it’s clear that they have already started to achieve that goal, with data becoming a much larger part of the esports ecosystem over recent years, and the recognition of their award nomination is proof of that success.

“When we were nominated that made us look back because nomination coincided with us hitting the five-year milestone,” says Maurer. “And it is a nice moment of reflection and feels good that this is also recognised in the wider scope of esports, which we really care about and live in it every day.”

The post Meet GRID Esports, The Data Company Powering More Than You Might Think first appeared on Esports Awards.

Call of Duty has been one of the biggest games in the world for almost 15 years, and its esports scene is even older. From the old days of GameBattles, which was recently announced to be shutting down, through to the massive Call of Duty League of recent years it has always been an entertaining watch thanks to the fast-paced play that requires incredible reactions and stick control.

This year one team has had one of the most up-and-down seasons we have ever seen in CoD, going from champions of the first major, to last place at the third major, and then winners of the world championship. The New York Subliners have put on quite a show for fans over the past 12 months, and that is why they are in the running for the Esports Team of the Year award. You can vote for them all, and give them two votes instead of one thanks to Turbo Week, right now but be quick as voting closes on November 20th.

“We are happy with the results we have achieved, to a certain extent,” said team coach Ehsan “DREAL” Javaid. “Particularly proud of how we faced adversity and struggle from Major 2 to Major 4, and we bounced back to win both Major 5 and Champs. Winning Champs this year really added the icing on the cake. We do, however, want to do better this year and win everything.”

Not only is the whole team up for an award, but DREAL is a finalist for coach of the year, and both Paco “HyDra” Rusiewiez and Matthew “KiSMET” Tinsley are finalists for controller player of the year. The team as a whole has been incredibly impressive, and despite the disappointing mid-season run they feel confident heading into Vegas that they can walk out with an award or two.

“We think we’ve been the best team, absolutely,” said Farzam Kamel, CEO of the team. “We had an absolutely dominant finals performance, won three of the year’s six tournaments, and all as a dark horse team no one thought was a contender at the beginning of the year. We won not just because of talent, as most rankings had us in the bottom half or third of the league going into the year but because of all the foundational work players and staff put in here to build and sustain a winning culture. That’s work no one sees from the outside.”

Looking further ahead the team is currently preparing for the new season after Call of Duty Modern Warfare III launched last week. While it is a direct sequel to last year’s Call of Duty Modern Warfare II meaning the changes may not be as dramatic as usual, the launch of a new game is sure to create some challenges for the players, and despite having some time to experiment there is still a lot to learn.

“We think this game brings a lot of upside in the ability to use different boots etc in your class to create different ways to play the game,” said Kimset. “As for maps we’re not entirely sure on a competitive level how they will play but from a public match standpoint they are great and great for nostalgia.”

We’ve seen before in CoD that some players really struggle to get acclimatised to the new game and can fall off, or alternatively take a massive step forward, from game to game. However, with the core systems of the game remaining relatively similar between last year and this year the Subliners are not particularly worried about falling off for next season.

“In CoD you really can’t “lose” your skill, just certain games cater to other players’ playstyle more,” said Hydra. “With that being said this game feels a lot like MW2 so we feel it will have relatively the same results in the aspect of playstyle and our ability.”

While some of the team will be taking a brief break from learning the new game to join us in Vegas in a couple of weeks, they are confident that their preparation, and the behind-the-scenes systems that the team has put in place, will make sure they remain the best team in Call of Duty for the upcoming season. They, of course, are hoping to avoid the rollercoaster season they just endured and remain at the top consistently, but as viewers, another up-and-down season like last year would certainly be entertaining and a great story!

The post What The CoD Champs Think Of MW3 first appeared on Esports Awards.

Ibai Llanos Garatea, known to most as just Ibai, is one of the biggest streamers in the world, being the third most followed channel on Twitch and having over 11 million subscribers on YouTube. But when it comes to Spanish creators he is unmatched and considered one of the biggest celebrities in the world for those that speak the language.

From humble beginnings as a League of Legends caster he has grown into one of the most recognisable faces in gaming, even for those who don’t speak Spanish, and it has been quite a ride. He has grown from casting the regional Spanish LoL league to hosting his own sell-out events and became the first person ever to win three Esports Awards, winning the Streamer of the Year presented by Lexus award in 2020, 2021 and 2023. This year he is in the running to become a four-time winner and you wouldn’t want to bet against him.

For Ibai this incredible journey has just been a case of taking one day at a time and always looking for his next challenge. He never imagined that he would reach the heights that he has, but thanks to his hard work and natural charisma, he keeps raising the bar.

“I never thought I was going to be a streamer,” says Ibai. “And besides, I really mean it, it was never a goal in my life until I really decided to be a streamer. I mean, it’s not something that you dream about when you’re a kid or 14 years old. You don’t think that or want to be a streamer, much less expect to have a world record. Much less did I expect to win an award.”

Ibai’s three wins in a row show not only how large and powerful his community is, but also how he has diversified his content over the years. We’ve seen even the biggest of streamers fall off after a couple of years and be overtaken by others, but for three years Ibai has stayed at the top of the game and that is because he is always doing something new.

When he got his first win back in 2020 his solo streaming journey was still relatively new and of course was in the middle of a pandemic, meaning he was limited in what he could do. Since then he has expanded, doing more content away from his setup and taking on new ventures such as setting up an esports team and even hosting major events that have sold out massive venues.

“I would say that this has been a little bit of the evolution of both myself and my content,” says Ibai. “Something that I always liked a lot, was the creation of events and new things, but obviously, when you are starting and you don’t have much economic margin, you have to do it differently, right? That whole process is very hard. It’s very stressful. But it’s a lot of fun because, in this kind of event, your imagination can be endless. I mean, you can do whatever you want. A balloon tournament, a Pétanque tournament, a boxing event, a football match, a sack race. In other words, it’s really whatever you want to do.”

Ibai’s events have gone a long way in establishing him as a mainstream name in the Spanish-speaking world, but the core of his offering will always be his streams, which is why he picked up three awards back to back. As one of the biggest celebs in the gaming world Ibai has achieved almost everything you can imagine, but getting the recognition from the Esports Awards has meant a lot. As the first person to win three awards, we presented Ibai with a special golden Esports Award and you can see the presentation in the video below.

“The Esports Award that has meant the most to me was the first one,” says Ibai looking back on his history of success. “Probably because it was the one I was least expecting and because, generally, Spanish people usually have a very difficult time winning these awards. An award may seem silly, but in a way, it is like recognizing and rewarding the work you have done during a year. In the end, there is only one award during the year. Therefore, it is the recognition of what you have done from January to December and the recognition, indirectly, of what you have done during your whole life.”

After being at the absolute top of his game for years Ibai is showing no signs of slowing down. While his content now looks very different to when he first won an Esports Award, he has continued to innovate and will likely continue to do so over the coming years. He revealed to us that while retirement has crossed his mind sometimes, that day isn’t here just yet.

“Sometimes I think about retiring or doing things differently or resting a lot more,” says Ibai. “I think in the future I will do things differently, maybe I won’t do so much live. Maybe I focus my career, my life, to do other things, but I’m still very young, as they say, I just started. I’ve been doing this for very few years, compared to people who have been doing it for 15, 20, or 30 years. So I don’t really know, but I do think that 2024 will be an impressive year.”

Ibai is once again a finalist for the Streamer of the Year presented by Lexus award in 2023, and while he will be a favourite given his three past victories, he still needs your votes to make sure he wins.

The post How Ibai Won Three Esports Awards first appeared on Esports Awards.

Team Vitality has been a top-level organisation for years, consistently being home to many top teams across the biggest games. But the past 12 months have been the best the organisation has ever had, with multiple world championships and many trophies being added to their collection.

“It’s definitely been one of the greatest years for Team Vitality,” says Fabien “Neo” Devide, co-founder of Team Vitality. “We’ve been a part of several remarkable stories throughout the year, on top of celebrating our tenth anniversary. While we had our initial expectations at the beginning of the year, achieving so many brilliant results has been a dream come true for us.”

Vitality has teams in League of Legends, Counter-Strike, Rocket League, Valorant, Call of Duty Mobile and FIFA, all of which have performed this year, with the standouts being the Counter-Strike and Rocket League rosters. In Rocket League Vitality were the team to beat throughout the year, eventually claiming the world championship, while in CS:GO they became the last-ever Major winners, in their home city of Paris.

“The BLAST Paris Major was an exceptionally important event for us,” says Devide. “At the beginning of the year, our overall goal was to see success across our various teams. However, the Paris Major was especially significant for us. The fact that the final ever Counter-Strike: Global Offensive Major was held in France added an extraordinary aspect to it. We were determined to achieve something remarkable on home soil, and the moment when we won will stay with me forever. Victory in the Paris Major is the crowning achievement of my career and possibly the most significant win we’ve ever had.”

But the success of the past year has not come easily. After years of being close, but rarely claiming the biggest prizes in esports, Vitality started on a different path to try and improve their competitive chances a few years ago. This started out with greater investments in support staff, facilities and anything that might help the players perform better.

Then they took what was seen as a risk in some communities by embracing the idea of international rosters, combining the top players from across the world. They also continued their top scouting work to bring in some new young players, as they had previously done and found success with. Sometimes the results weren’t great, but this year the experiment has proven successful.

“The groundwork for our success this year began in 2021 and extended across 2022 as the foundation for our goal to become a globally recognised brand,” says Devide.“We transitioned to a more international focus across all of our teams, particularly in games like Counter-Strike. We also made significant investments in infrastructure and coaching staff, which played a crucial role in our success.”

The change in strategy and massive investment in competitive success has certainly paid off. Across the Pro categories Vitality has eight nominations, more than any other org this year, including two rosters in the running for Esports Team of the Year and two coaches up for Esports Coach of the Year, showing that their commitment to providing the best support staff possible has worked.

They head into the Esports Awards presented by Lexus as favourites to walk away with at least a trophy or two, after a year that other teams will struggle to match. But, like all our finalists, they will need your votes to secure those awards on November 30th.

“We’re incredibly proud of our countless nominations,” says Devide. “It’s remarkable that we’ve received so many nominations this year as it was a feat we hadn’t even considered was even possible at the beginning of the year. For us right now, we’ll go into the Esports Awards presented by Lexus with an immense amount of pride of what we’ve accomplished and make the most of the moment. Being recognised as one of the best organisations in the world is an achievement in itself, even if we don’t win anything. We hope that everything we’ve done this year has shown the panel and the fans that we are worthy of these awards.”

You can join Devide, as well as other Vitality staff, at the Esports Awards presented by Lexus in Las Vegas by getting your tickets now.

The post Inside Vitality’s Dominant 2023 first appeared on Esports Awards.

The ‘esports winter’ is a term that has been thrown around a lot over the past year or so with many companies in the space struggling financially and less money coming into the industry. We’ve seen many teams fold, tournaments downsized and funding start to run dry, making it a difficult time for many. But one area that has always struggled to monetize effectively and be stable is the esports journalism industry.

Over the years countless publications have entered and then left the esports industry, including major names such as ESPN, with one of the main reasons for leaving being the difficulty in securing any kind of revenue from the content they produce. However, some publications and many top journalists have stuck around for years, finding success in unique ways and constantly providing the high-quality journalism that any industry needs.

One of the biggest success stories in the space has been Dexerto, a publication that initially started out on a reasonably small scale covering esports that has now expanded to be one of the biggest gaming sites in the world, with multiple sister publications also under its banner. Over the last few years, the company has grown significantly and is rightfully a two-time winner of the Esports Coverage Platform of the Year award as well as a finalist this year.

“When we formed Dexerto, the four founders had each spent years working in the space, so it was our passion, but of course, there were uncertainties around the future, its growth, user acquisition and more,” says Chris Marsh, co-founder of Dexerto. “It quickly became obvious that we had to boast a diverse content offering, or we would live or die on the success of esports. Fast forward to now, and that decision has paid dividends — we’ve been able to continue to support the space, while creating content across a number of other verticals that have more widespread appeal.”

After initially starting as a dedicated esports publication, with a large focus on Call of Duty, Dexerto started to branch out to the wider world of gaming and internet culture. From single-player games to top influencers and hardware, Dexerto now covers just about everything an esports fan could need, and this expansion has resulted in a lot of more casual viewers entering the site. Marsh reveals that numbers for this year are up around 40% and Dexerto is often in the top five gaming sites in the world.

Another publication that has stood the test of time is Esports News UK, which was founded by Dom Sacco, a finalist for Esports Journalist of the Year. With a focus on UK-specific esports news the site takes the opposite approach to Dexerto, going incredibly in-depth on a smaller area of the industry. It’s fair to say the site is not competing with the likes of Dexerto when it comes to numbers, but it has found its own niche that allows Dom and his team to produce top-quality content on a tiny budget.

“I’ve never been super focused on traffic,” says Sacco. “I’d much rather write about what the UK esports community is interested in and build a dedicated readership that visit the website each day, rather than publish a string of SEO-related general gaming articles that users will find via Google but then leave the site as soon as they’ve found what they wanted. For me personally, chasing numbers is futile, it’s a bit of a race to the bottom and I don’t have a big enough team to go head-to-head with the big sites.”

While sites and journalists are finding ways to survive and produce some great content, both Marsh and Sacco mentioned that focusing on long-form investigative journalism isn’t really possible anymore. It has never been particularly easy and almost every site that has tried to focus on that area is either no longer around or has gone in a different direction. This has led to many journalists striking out on their own.

“Esports journalism is in a tough spot,” says Sacco. “I think we’ll see more journalists launching their own individual newsletters and Substacks, and fewer publications lasting longer. From what I’ve seen, the esports community seems to like following specific reporters over news brands. There are exceptions of course, with the likes of Dexerto and Esports Insider showing relative sustainability over a longer period of time.”

But esports journalism has almost always been in a tough spot, and yet it continues to produce some incredible content thanks to the journalists who keep working despite the lack of stability in the industry. We are excited to be able to host some of them at the Esports Awards, along with the publications they write for, as they compete for the Esports Journalist of the Year and Esports Coverage Platform of the Year awards.

The post How Esports Journalism Keeps Surviving first appeared on Esports Awards.

In esports it’s not particularly unusual to have family members competing on the same team or against each other. 2022 Lifetime Achievement Award winners Daniel ‘OGRE1’ Ryan & Tom ‘OGRE2’ Ryan are one of the most famous examples, with the likes of the Buck twins (Halo) and the Hassan brothers (Dota 2) being other notable family duos.

But what is unusual is having two family members competing for the same award. This year both Nikola “NiKo” Kovač and his cousin Nemanja “huNter-” Kovač are up for the Esports PC Player of the Year award, and they both play for the same Counter-Strike team meaning there is little to separate the two of them!

“There’s no rivalry between us, we respect each other a lot and what each of us brings to the team,” said huNter- when asked about who will win the award between the two of them. “For sure NiKo has a better chance of winning it because he’s just simply the best rifler who ever touched this game.”

Unsurprisingly NiKo also praised his team-mate and rightfully so, as they have both had an incredible year. Both players have claimed HLTV MVP awards from top-level tournaments in the past year and at different times have been the star performer in the team. While NiKo has long been seen as one of the best players in the world, over the last 12 months huNter- has very much stepped up his game to also be in that conversation.

As part of G2 Esports both players won IEM Katowice and IEM Cologne, two of the biggest tournaments of the year, and have both had standout performances throughout. The fact both are up for the award shows just how good they have been, as it is not often we see two players from the same team in contention for the same award.

But it isn’t just personal accolades they are in with a shot of winning. Their work, along with the other G2 rosters, means that as well as the two cousins being finalists, G2 Esports is also a finalist for the Esports Organisation of the Year award.

“I’m very happy with what we’ve done in 2023 so far,” said huNter-. “Winning both Cologne and Katowice is a dream of every professional player, but winning it in one year it’s just amazing. We were inconsistent throughout the whole year, but we had our peeks when we needed it the most, except for that Major in Paris where we failed big time and that was the only big failure for us so far in this year.”

Regardless of who walks out with the award, the pair clearly have a great relationship and love playing together. More than a few times throughout history we have seen top teams fall apart due to personal differences, but with these two there is no chance of that, as it has been a long-time dream to play together at the top level.

“It feels amazing playing together in the same team, that was our dream when we were 8-9 year old kids, playing together in internet cafes, having fun and dreaming that one day we can compete on a big stage together,” said huNter-.

It also gives them some advantages over other teams. Obviously, the two have played together for years, so will have incredible communication and an understanding of what the other will be doing that comes naturally after playing so many hours together. But even outside of the game, it gives the pair an outlet that some other players might not have. Coming from the same background and family means they have an understanding of what each other has been through and can offer support that might be difficult for others to provide.

“It’s really nice to have someone that is close to you on the same team, we share a lot of things within the team, we can rely on each other when it comes to anything, we have each other’s back at all times, and that’s the best part,” said NiKo.

Now the pair face a potentially difficult few months as they transition over to Counter-Strike 2. The new game is replacing CS:GO as the competitive game of choice and now all pro players are trying to figure out how to master all the new systems it brings. To find out more about CS2 and its impact on the pro scene check out last week’s newsletter, where huNter- gave his thoughts on the new game and how it might impact the team.

But despite the massive upheaval in the scene the relationship between the two players is clearly strong and will no doubt continue well into the future. Even the chance to win an Esports Award doesn’t seem to have impacted that!

But they both face some tough competition in the category, with the best of the best from the world of PC esports hoping to walk out of Vegas with the trophy in just a few weeks. If you think either of the G2 players deserves to win, or any other finalist for that matter, then make sure to vote for your winners now.

The post Meet The Cousins Competing For An Esports Award first appeared on Esports Awards.

After months of waiting, Counter-Strike 2 finally launched earlier this week, signalling the end of Counter-Strike Global Offensive, the game that has been one of the top esports in the world for the past 10 years and is a two-time Esports Game Of The Year award winner. It’s not often a top esport is retired like this and while there is a lot of excitement about the future of CS, there is also a lot of sadness within the community that something so loved is now gone forever.

CS:GO first launched back in 2012 and it didn’t exactly take off. With CS 1.6 and Source still popular within the community many players just stayed on those games instead of switching to the new title. This was partly due to people just enjoying the older games, and also partly because at launch CS:GO just wasn’t all that good, with a number of issues and gameplay that didn’t feel great compared to the previous versions.

But quickly players started to flood in, particularly after the Call To Arms update in 2013 that added tradable weapon skins and kicked off the massive skin economy that no doubt saved CS:GO but also resulted in the controversial gambling of skins. From that point on CS:GO grew rapidly and never looked back, establishing itself as one of the top competitive games in the world and growing to be one of the best esports ever seen. It has sold out major arenas, broken online viewership records across all esports and given a lot of people careers.

Now CS:GO’s time is over, and Counter-Strike 2 is here. It brings with it an updated engine, sub-tick servers, new smoke physics and a whole lot more. To the untrained eye it can look reasonably similar to CS:GO, but playing it feels completely different. Even just the simple act of moving around feels strange at first, and for some players, it is taking a lot of getting used to!  With top tournaments still running on CS:GO for the next couple of weeks, pro teams have been left with a bit of a conundrum on which they should be playing, and it’s not an easy choice to make.

“We had to change our plan because we’re getting close to the release of CS2 and I think it’s really important that you start playing a little bit,” says Danny “zonic” Sørensen, coach of the Team Vitality Counter-Strike roster and a finalist for the Esports Coach of the Year award. “We saw when we went from 1.6 to CS:GO that teams who switched first were definitely the teams that performed well.”

Once all tournaments switch over to CS2, which will happen over the course of the next few weeks, then all the teams will do the same and there will no doubt be a massive shakeup of the top teams in the world. While some top contenders like Vitality switched to CS2 weeks ago and are feeling good about their chances in the early days of CS2, other teams have waited until launch and even then are still focusing on the tournaments they have to play on CS:GO, even if that might put them at a disadvantage in early CS2 competition.

“I don’t know how it will impact me or my team, but it will be difficult for everyone and it’s too early to say if me or anyone will stay the same, be a worse or better player in CS2,” says Nemanja “huNter-” Kovač, a player for G2 Esports and finalist for Esports PC Player of the Year. “But everybody will work hard and play a lot at the beginning including my team and me.”

For the pro players and teams this is a difficult time, having to manage two games for at least a few weeks and then having to go into CS2 and figure out all the new systems. The pressure will no doubt be increased and it will likely be a stressful few months for many as they try to figure out the best ways to play the new game before the first Major in early 2024.

But on the other side of the fence, the launch of a new game has given tournament organisers a fantastic new opportunity to show off the new game when the entire esports industry is fully on board the hype train for CS2. With CS2 being so popular that Valve has had to remove some features to free up servers to handle demand, it feels like everyone wants to experience CS2, and that provides an opportunity for TOs to put on a big show that could bring in a new audience.

“We are very optimistic that CS2 will be a worthy successor to CS:GO and likely to surpass the legacy its predecessor has left behind,” says Shaun Clark, the Senior Director for Ecosystems at ESL FACEIT Group a finalist for Esports Broadcast/Production Team of the Year. “While the game is still very similar, there are differences to it, which will level the playing field between the existing competitive scene and the influx of new teams. We expect our ESL Pro Tour to start off unpredictable but certainly fierce as the new wave slowly but surely enters our structure in the hope of challenging the status quo of what we know from the professional scene today.”

It will still be a few weeks before we get to see the biggest tournaments in the world bring the best teams in the world onto CS2, but expectations are high and if they can be met, we could be entering a new golden era for Counter-Strike. With a new game, bigger events and likely a big shake-up of the top teams and players it will be an exciting few months for the pro-CS scene, and we can’t wait to see how it plays out.

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