Agreed, All of CS twitter is now filled with clout goblins who were skincels before, so many wannabe CS influencers, giving their no shot opinion on things as if anyone cares about it.

VAL twitter is worse in the regard it's cringe e-daters, zoomer drama and kpopification cringefest. And it's filled with shill opinions so nothing feels genuine

It's pick your poison basically but as a CS fan personally id rather pick Val twitter because i can handle that shit i suppose. i fucking hate CS twitter shit

lmao understandable but this was coming for anyone who knows how Riot as a company works. Unlike Valve Riot's main income comes from their flagship games and its eSports. They invest heavily in it and always cater to the mainstream to min max profits instead of doing something original.

Valve on the other hand, which i am familiar with, actually gives much less shit about CS because if CS were to die tomorrow they're still gucci because Steam exists alongside other products. Which is a blessing in disguise because they the community is what builds the game and Valve just tweaks things time to time instead of being in total control.

Funnily enough you're not wrong at all, but man people defending this just have no idea how good it actually can be without franchising

Im mostly a CS fan who watches APAC VAL

What makes you think that Riot is going to drop franchising? They're not Valve, for Riot the eSports side of their product is what brings in new players and fans to their game. The reason they have franchising in the first place is to max out their reach and potential. They specifically chose orga that have insane clout and fans. The point here to note is that they have made deal with the "orgs" not the pros themselves. They could give less shits about the players ( unless they have insane clout like tenz ofc ). They have made Premier system precisely to cut off tier-2 slowly, they're not here to lookout for players, but to increase their profits and Franchising is really good for them as expected

Except FURIA every other Brazilian/SA team is doing VERY good lmao. Compared to VAL, Brazilian CS is super fucking solid right now

paiN, Imperial, 9z, MIBR, Red Canids, Legacy to an extent (can't judge because they smurf in NA ) are all teams that can beat any team in EU except top 5

Brazil along with Argentinian CS right now is having a revival, and they have enough talents to assemble 3 superteams that can rival the best EU teams currently.

God I hope slump is not a hacker, attend some LANs and show he's legit is all I need. If he is truly legit then it's going to be such a big deal given he's an AWP prodigy after a long time

Yeah the death of LAN culture is what destroying scenes. Funnily enough NA is doing that very well, there's consistent tier-3, tier-4 LANS in NA right now with Fragadelphia, Launders LAN and a few more local cups that teams in ECL and below attend. Lake is one of the highlights of this, given that he won Launders LAN. One of the reasons he's pretty comfortable in LAN was because he used to attend Fragadelphia too so Pro League Studio environment is not a big deal for him with the way he's showing up .

In the long term when we look back we'll know that this is what kickstarted the NA revival ( if it does happen )

Highly unlikely, if any of them were going to come they would have already announced it given they have to announce the calendar till 2026. So for the next two years except the Major and IEM Dallas ( if it even will exist next year ) are going to be the only tier-1 NA events. NA market while is profitable is the most expensive to run so the profit margins aren't much

BLAST is hosting a major in Austin because they have a deal with the tow's government to host events there IIRC, similar reason as to why they are hosting the World Finals in Singapore this time. Unless more TOs use this approach for the NA market, it's impossible for NACS to grow at a faster pace than what they are currently growing with

Disclaimer : Don't know about OW so I won't be giving any thoughts on that

VALORANT not from a skill POV but based on how the circuit operates.

CS is the easiest because there are so many tournaments ( in EU and SA ) for players to showcase themselves and actually climb up the rankings. VALORANT is a closed off circuit, while thanks to passionate fans VALORANT has these stars don't go unnoticed but compared to CS it's a lot harder ( with respect to the time it takes ) to come out of nowhere and climb into tier-1 circuit. Especially with 2025 where CS will have so many LANs, and a lot of teams will not be attending all of these, for any hard grinders out there CS might be a lot easier to break into compared to the current VALORANT circuit

Yes, Not even Eleague level but something on a smaller scale like Beyond the Summit would also be helpful. Funnily enough NA right now has tier-3/4 LANs in Fragadelphia and Launders LAN. Fragadelphia is giving a lot of experience for a lot of NACS players but it's nothing that's taken seriously IMO. A step up in the prize pool, and more to win events is what will bring the hardcore fans.

Unironically NA CS is going to be a lot stronger than it was before, NA did lose out on the veterans to VALORANT but it has forced NA teams and players to rethink their positions and invest smartly. And we can already see the results in local NA orgs like M80 and Wildcard building up things from the bottom up instead of throwing cash around.

Hello! New here

Yes
NACS is slowly coming back. It's not just reck, Lake and JBa but there are more and more solid talents right now in NA ECL and below who can actually make a difference for NA

All NA needs is more CCT and tier-2 tournaments for players in NA to grind for. Look at Brazil and South America, all of the teams are solid because they are constantly playing tournaments all year. They have the highest amount of tournaments outside EU and it shows. Hope things look up for NA in 2025