Main Events in 2020 in CS:GO
Elen Stelmakh2020 is over. And it means that now it is time to sum the year up and to mark the main events in CS:GO.
January
What do we remember about the first month in 2020? First of all, reshuffles. k1to’s and syrsoN’s reshuffles from Sprout to BIG made the German team confident about their powers. In January, Natus Vincere parted from GuardiaN signing Perfecto from Syman. Meanwhile, fnatic bought Golden from Cloud9 making him a rightful captain of the team. MSL again returned to North replacing JUGi. Then Xizt left fnatic to join Dignitas. And CR4ZY sold the roster to c0ntact Gaming.
But January is special not only thanks to the reshuffle: it held numerous significant changes in the ecosystem of the professional stage. In the middle of January, Valve modified the rules of the qualifier for the Major tournaments according to which participants in all stages of a championship will be defined not by the results of the previous tournament but by the total number of RMR points. ESL also represented new rules when they increased the lineup of the EPL participant up 24 teams which led to a real fight with a tournament by FACEIT that had not been announced yet.
February
In the second month of the season, there were fewer interesting events, but their significance for the stage is hard to overestimate. For example, FACEIT announced their new league called FLASHPOINT with partner teams forcing ESL to sign the Louvre Agreement with their teams.
As for the sad part, SmithZz and Ex6TenZ ended their career, and China started canceling first esports events due to the coronavirus pandemic. Also there appeared a lot of rumors about the main rival of CS:GO –VALORANT.
Then we could witness the last LAN event in the season – IEM Katowice 2020. The champion of IEM Katowice 2020 was Natus Vincere that was going to start a new era of their domination on the professional stage.
March
At the very beginning of March it was clear that we were not going to see LAN tournaments in the coming months. Against the background of the news, ALEX decided to leave the roster of Vitality, referring to tiredness and busy schedule. The French roster found a replacement to the British in the young Misutaaa giving the role of the captain to apEX.
In March, there was a scandal connected with the disrupted transfer of the Danish roster of Heroic to FunPlus Phoenix. The Danish held only one match in the new organization, coming back after es3tag’s transfer to Astralis. It started the official history of the rosters with six players.
In this month, there also was a reschedule for ESL One Rio Major to November. The changes in the calendar were caused by the coronavirus outbreak.
April
Heroic returned to the professional stage announcing the renewed roster. At the beginning of April, Evil Geniuses decided to kick ImAPet out after his fight with tarik and stanislaw. In EG, the coach’s spot was taken by zews who had left MIBR one month ago. ENCE signed Jamppi causing a stir in the community as the young gamer has a VAC ban.
As for the results, fnatic became the winner of ESL Pro League Season 11, beating mousesports (3:2) at the grand final. MAD Lions won the first season of FLASHPOINT earning $500 000.
May
In this month, gla1ve and Xyp9x decided to take a little break and leave Astralis. Rumor has it that the team could lose all five players but the lineup was kept. Instead of the departed leaders Astralis signed Snappi and JUGi. The losses were not over as olofmeister decided to leave FaZe Clan for the second time making the team take Bymas on trial. The changes also concerned NiP that took in hampus instead of Lekr0. The most important transfer for CIS happened to Virtus.pro – the organization bought YEKINDAR from pro100.
June
In the first month of the summer big news doesn’t traditionally happen. The previous season wasn’t an exception. For example, Hiko decided to hang the keyboard on a hook and take a break from CS:GO leaving for VALORANT some time later. Valve saw a conflict of interests delivering an ultimatum to several teams. The company obligated seven teams to settle the conflict of interests before the start of ESL One Rio 2020. First of all, it regards the owners of the Brazilian YeaH! Gaming that is represented by MIBR, FaZe Clan, and Evil Geniuses. The ultimatum concerned GeT_RiGhT too, the Swedish has a share of Ninjas in Pyjamas despite the performance for Dignitas.
July
Despite the international pause that spread to the whole TIER-1 stage, in July there were numerous interesting events. In North America Liquid decided to change the roster signing the talent Grim from Triumph. The young American replaced nitr0 that moved to VALORANT in the end.
Astralis bought Bubzkji from MAD Lions, getting JUGi benched. On 1 July, the official contract with es3tag was signed: the gamer immediately joined the lineup of the organization.
ESL One Cologne wanted to hold a closed event but decided to go online and divided the regions. Gambit signed Hobbit, switching to the format with six gamers in the roster.
August
The teams came back from the international pause having had rest and gained strength. Additionally, Kjaerbye joined FaZe Clan right before the start of ESL One Cologne 2020. After the failures at ESL One Cologne 2020, mousesports decided to make changes: woxic was replaced by Bymas. However, the competitive stage suffered irreplaceable losses as ScreaM decided to finish his career in CS:GO and move to VALORANT.
But the stage went through a monumental scandal connected with the coach bag which resulted in real bans for two years for zoneR, HUNDEN, and dead. Moreover, ESIC started their own investigation. Its results were published in the next month.
September
As a result of ESIC, 37 coaches got banned including Rejin, Twista, lmbt, and pita. The Brazilian stage lost the championship roster from MIBR as the organization decided to depart from fer, and later he was followed by TACO and FalleN. In September Cloud9 decided to make another global reshuffle when they started to assemble the star lineup with ALEX, woxic, es3tag, floppy, and mezii.
gla1ve decided to resume their career coming back to Astralis as a rifler. Complexity lost oBo at ESL Pro League Season 12 Europe when he unexpectedly flew to America leaving their teammates with a stand-in.
October
Astralis returned to his championship roster for good as Xyp9x had rest and boosted the team. Meanwhile, G2 announced signing NiKo from FaZe Clan, switching to the format with six players. MIBR assembled a new roster before BLAST Premier Fall Series 2020 moving the whole team to Europe.
The American stage suffered some losses as the organization 100 Thieves decided to leave CS:GO. Alongside, jks joined Complexity taking a vacant place after losing oBo.
Evil Geniuses came to Europe to perform at BLAST Premier Fall Series 2020.
November
Vitality took a step ahead signing Nivera from Heretics. The young Belgian became the sixth player of the French team, practicing on Inferno and Dust 2. North decided to put MSL on transfer and aizy, taking Kristou and kreaz for a trial.
FURIA and Liquid also returned to Europe to hold final championships of the season with the beat European teams.
December
ESIC closed their investigation spotting numerous coach’s infractions. Before the start of BLAST Premier Fall Finals, there was a little scandal connected with unwillingness of the teams to provide teamspeak records and demos to the organizer. Right after the end of IEM Global Challenge 2020, Twistzz announced his leave from Liquid as he wants to try himself as a member of the European team. At the end of the year, GeT_RiGhT announced their transfer to VALORANT, leaving the question about the continuation of his career as a gamer open.
Elen Stelmakh is a creative individual dedicated to advancing gaming culture through articles and visual design. As a full-time EGamersWorld author and designer for a gaming website, Elen not only creates content but also infuses it with energy and creativity.