A more fantastic storyline could not have been written by masters of the craft; the idea that it takes place in reality is an outstanding closure to one of the stranger (and toxic) storylines of the professional Counter-Strike scene in 2020.
To fully appreciate the delicious irony, a quick recap.
MIBR plays against FURIA in June in a battle for Brazil when an MIBR player disconnects and states ‘NL’, or not live. Damage had been done and a frag came out on the side of FURIA prior to the call. As teams and admins met in Discord to figure out how to proceed, MIBR players begin calling on their Twitter fans to apply pressure to FURIA to restart the round in its entirety.
Admins refused to make the call, and many noted that MIBR used toxicity and the weaponizing of their fan base in order to find a beneficial outcome.
Some eyebrows raised, mild annoyances, but the Counter-Strike scene continued on.
MIBR then met against the T2 team Chaos Esports Club and were readily being slaughtered. Fittingly, on the same map that MIBR used their fan base to receive an advantageous call that ultimately came from FURIA’s CEO, Inferno, Chaos player Nathan ‘leaf’ Orf slapped an MIBR player in A site.
While multiple kills were netted throughout the Bo3 series that resulted in a clean-sweep for Chaos, the kill from the apartment balcony is the one that tends to be pointed at by MIBR fans as they state that Chaos was cheating in the server.
Queue unfathomable levels of drama as MIBR players malded for the next two weeks on Twitter and Twitch, playing clips in slow-motion that somehow proved that ‘leaf’ was cheating, despite the alleged cheat not being able to occur as the MIBR player that leaf appeared to snap to wasn’t loaded within the same cell.
Death threats and toxicity again ran rampant as Gaules and his MIBR friends encouraged fans outrage against the young players of Chaos, resulting in two players needing to set their social media accounts to private to dodge the barrage of toxic statements because MIBR ‘couldn’t lose if Chaos was cheating.’
We fast forward through this fall-out a month and a half, where allegations began climbing of two different controversies within the professional scene of Counter-Strike: one was match-fixing, and one with coaches using a spectating bug exploit to gain an informational advantage that Valve has stated is cheating.
MIBR, the very same organization in Brazil that has been accusing everyone that defeats them of cheating, was one of the first teams indicted in the scandal with coach ‘dead’, resulting in his removal from the organization as ESIC levied a massive ban onto him. Shortly after, MIBR was split apart.
Chaos announced yesterday morning that they now have a spot in the upcoming Intel Extreme Masters in New York, taking the spot that MIBR would have likely held if they weren’t torn apart by cheating and poor play.
This is arguably the greatest (and most fitting) end to this storyline that has infuriated large portions of the CS community, with multiple prominent players coming forward and reminding younger fans that the legends of ZywOo and S1mple both started with raucous cheating allegations every time they managed an upset.
Chaos notes that, due to roster lock, Marke will not be able to play with the organization in IEM and they will have a stand-in. Precisely who the stand-in will be, however, is anyone’s guess at the moment. Savor the moment, fans, these come far too rarely.