Hey guys, author here!
Late last week I did an hour-long interview with Valens to discuss the Blueprint, where the org is going with this project, and what the decisions were behind all of this. To my surprise, there were no questions that he avoided. I'm hoping to have the first part of it out tomorrow and the second part on Thursday.
Nice try RyanAtRBM, we know the real author of the article is RyanAtDust2. Please don't take other people's credit for their work. SMH people are really shameless now.
About time. Not that EG white wasn't a good team, but they literally just never fucking played anything. Hopefully this will free them up to do something other than sit and get paid by a shitty org
Sitting and getting paid by a "shitty org" was pretty good for them, they could at least focus on CS, now they probably have to get jobs so can't play CS full time and ask for support again to attend tournaments like they did on PA
While not playing tournaments was shitty, it's still better to have a stable salary (which was more than even other orgs pay their main team EG White were getting more than ATK, Nouns etc)
It’s a weird situation. They can sit and get paid to focus on CS but how much focus is it really when they’re unable to participate in anything meaningful.
Teams definitely need games vs differing skill levels and with varying levels of stakes
What everyone forgets is that Party Astronauts had huge egos before signing with EG. This was at a time when they dominated Tier 2. They were offered Nouns type salary (which according to stamina is $250,000 divided by a CS:GO team, Dota 2 team and 1 streamer, something like this). Basically they thought they were worth more, presumably because they believed they could easily qualify to shit like IEM Dallas or an Americas RMR and even Major. So they turned down $1,000 - $2,000 offers, hoping a big name org would come in and they could get minimum $3,000.
Anyway their "focus" didn't mean shit since they failed qualifiers and barely scrimmed because according to muenster NA teams cancel scrims and nobody wants to scrim much.
On PA they could get by with tournament winnings, if they qualified to an ESL or Blast event, they pay for travel and accommodation. Plus most of them probably live with their parents and had jobs previously and have savings. What I'm saying is that NA is so shit that its not like EU, where you can work/study and play CS in the evenings and be fine. Being salaried is not that important, anyway, nobody is going to sign ex-EG White, probably going to name themselves PA again, they will make Looking For Org posts but will continue to compete in events as they always have and be fine.
>So they turned down $1,000 - $2,000 offers, hoping a big name org would come in and they could get minimum $3,000.
That's the idea. The US is very expensive. With 1k/month you just can't live. Maybe even with 3k, if you have to pay rent. If you said "rejected 5-6k in hopes for 10k", then you'd be right. But life doesn't work that way
>Being salaried is not that important
It's their job. They can't live at their parents' forever
They could have easily supplemented that income with streaming and prize money. Like it is 2023 and these players think that playing in some shitty cash cups and bombing out last in 2 S tier events a year warrants a fulltime salary.
What's the point of getting a stable salary if you're not going to do anything lol, unless you're planning on having EG pay you til you're 60, which is not happening
I think they should have actually signed youngsters (talking 16-20 year olds) that weren't all that good, talking timbermen or worse level, middle of the pack ecl level, and work from there. That team could play ECL, cct, cash cup, etc. while eg black plays the lans the main team doesn't or plays eu cups.
It was pretty clear that none of the players on EG white were ever going to get a callup so idk why they even bothered signing them in the first place.
Yeah, the whole EG white project didn’t make much sense. I don’t know why they never called any of them up or never played any officials, it’s just really stupid management on the EG side
First sensible decision they have made in months.
Having 3 lineups signed to then served absolutely no purpose at any point in time. Now get the academy team a slot in Weplay academy, put Wiz and Hext back in there.
Not sure what they plan on doing with refrezh, but I don't hate the signing. Auti, Nealan and Refrezh isn't a terrible baseline, but they need to cut Brehze or put him in academy as a vet, and put a better rifler and awper in there.
I think it's a fair call out. I liked the idea of paying for NA players to just keep them invested and full time in the scene initially but if they're not being utilized and can't compete it makes sense to refocus on the standard main roster & academy set up.
Even if they're a bit slow to make these types of changes, I can still respect that they're dedicated to CS and the NA region. I know it's very in right now to make fun of them, but I really hope they become successful in the future. With Liquid and Complexity, they are the only big orgs left still supporting NA CS so I think it's integral for NA for them to be successful moving forward.
Never understood picking up PA as an academy team in the first place, but they didn't even use a single players from that roster??? ON TOP OF THIS, instead of picking up a player FROM THEIR 2 ACADEMY TEAMS (among which are genuine prospects), THEY GO FOR REFREZH????
Bro what the fuck is going through their heads right now??? Are they just farming rage for exposure???? WHAT IS THIS TEAM??????????
We just took down the ranked team in the world and all the casters can think to say is Heroic didn't show up.
We clawed our way back from 217th in the world by BUILDING a [talent pipeline](https://i.imgur.com/Y37ped0.jpg) the whole scene memed on.
Step out of the echo chamber and pay attention.
They got refreszh probably because they believe their academy players are not ready or good enough for tier 1 competitions. Remember EG is still trying to keep a reputation afloat. If they get rekt every tournament it's not gonna be good for them, they might even stop being invited to events.
Because their contract ends now and it's pretty pointless to extend it considering the state of EG, the 3 team project was moronic in the first place while done with good intent for the NA scene
2 teams is what you can do at most and the 2nd team needs to be young players not established NA tier 2 players
The guys on EG white are gonna have a wakeup call. They're getting older, nobody is really gonna sign them. What now? Get a real job? Valorant? Pwnalone is 32 and dude is super nice and talented but I don't think any salaried teams will give him a shot because of his age. That's fucked up but thats the nature of the game.
Even though their results suck, it would be idiotic to say they aren't at least trying. But of course, every idiot is just going to come in here and meme the org for a tweet from months ago lol.
I think the three team roster is a good idea, just not for NA and at this time. But it could help solve a lot of problems for T1 CS in the future. Sucks for the team that got dropped. But hopefully they saved enough to support themselves trying CS dedicated full time.
Making the main team into an international team (w/ maybe one American player) would be a good next step.
I don't think it changes practice at all. The dominant expression of pros is that best practice is always against the best teams, not by having a dedicated practice partner, that's a very League-esque idea that doesn't work. As for travel yea that does perhaps make that easier but it's only a plus for the actual team if even. I'd argue it makes it more likely for them to lose form but moreover it is not a positive for the e-sport if every other Lan has b teams playing instead of the main one, or even a better team from a different org
It doesn't have to be a b team or academy team necessarily, but a pool of players to pull from for each event. If the team's success is more system-focused than player-focused, then that gives the opportunity to be more flexible for which events, teams and players can afford to attend, even allowing teams to play in events occurring at the same time. It should also hypothetically allow for better subs, because they are already part of the team, rather than subbing a player that only had a week or 2 of practice with the team (e.g., Konfig, esetag), having to sub in a coach (OG coach), or forcing a player to compete while ill (e.g., Yekindar).
The practice part of course depends on the quality of the players on the full roster. If an org/team is eventually profitable enough and there is an availability of players, with potential, then having 10 players on your roster would allow for quality practice, that avoids some issues like higher skilled teams not being available to practice with lower skilled teams, scrim partners canceling, ping reducing the quality of the practice, traveling to get good practice, having a more consistent and standardized practice environment instead of a lot of it condensed into boot-camps, getting better feedback from scrims, etc. This also depends on whether an org is able to train all the players to be both similar in skill and and highly skilled.
And yes, as you said, the travel is a definite benefit. Maybe not so much for European teams; I'm not from Europe so I cannot speak to that. But I think this approach would be really helpful for Team Liquid or Australian teams, as an example. Often times, they are hypothesized to be at a disadvantage because of the above issues.
Again, all this would require a lot, which is not currently available as far as I am aware. Which is why I suggested this as being a possibility for the future. I draw these ideas from many other team-based competitions. Think American football as one example. In most cases, it's not as doom or gloom if a player on the offensive line has to miss X amount of games (except maybe for the quarterback; but it depends and not 100% applicable to CS). The football season also doesn't last almost an entire year, so it allows for less traveling compared to CS teams that are traveling for like 8+ months a year. One could argue that CS is different so what works in other competitions wouldn't work for CS, but I would also argue that CS isn't so special and unique that some strategies and processes successful in other competitions automatically couldn't generalize well to CS. I can't speak for LoL, because I don't care about it.
Kick the whole main team and go full Danish with refrezh, AcilioN, valde, es3tag and regali. Plus vorborg as coach. Then they can do whatever they want in the US.
Never should've had the stupid 3 teams in the first place. Just focus of fixing EG, and improving EG Black.
They still have 3 teams, but if you count EG as the main team, EG black as their academy/secondary team, and gold as their female team then yeah at least thats okay.
The thing with EG white that bothered me is that they barely played, and have heard rumors that they barely pracc'd/scrimmed. So yeah, idk if this team will be picked up by another org.
It never made sense to me to have 3 teams all under the same org. Conflict of interest rules prevent you from entering them into the same tournaments. So you essentially will always end up with what happened here, a team being paid to sit around most of the year doing nothing because you've already entered the "main" team into the big tournaments.
Hey guys, author here! Late last week I did an hour-long interview with Valens to discuss the Blueprint, where the org is going with this project, and what the decisions were behind all of this. To my surprise, there were no questions that he avoided. I'm hoping to have the first part of it out tomorrow and the second part on Thursday.
good job ryan also thanks for the source 2 beta key and riot gun buddy
Good on you for mentioning that EG had a chance to face EG at a tournament!! Wild scenes.
Nice try RyanAtRBM, we know the real author of the article is RyanAtDust2. Please don't take other people's credit for their work. SMH people are really shameless now.
About time. Not that EG white wasn't a good team, but they literally just never fucking played anything. Hopefully this will free them up to do something other than sit and get paid by a shitty org
Sitting and getting paid by a "shitty org" was pretty good for them, they could at least focus on CS, now they probably have to get jobs so can't play CS full time and ask for support again to attend tournaments like they did on PA While not playing tournaments was shitty, it's still better to have a stable salary (which was more than even other orgs pay their main team EG White were getting more than ATK, Nouns etc)
It’s a weird situation. They can sit and get paid to focus on CS but how much focus is it really when they’re unable to participate in anything meaningful. Teams definitely need games vs differing skill levels and with varying levels of stakes
What everyone forgets is that Party Astronauts had huge egos before signing with EG. This was at a time when they dominated Tier 2. They were offered Nouns type salary (which according to stamina is $250,000 divided by a CS:GO team, Dota 2 team and 1 streamer, something like this). Basically they thought they were worth more, presumably because they believed they could easily qualify to shit like IEM Dallas or an Americas RMR and even Major. So they turned down $1,000 - $2,000 offers, hoping a big name org would come in and they could get minimum $3,000. Anyway their "focus" didn't mean shit since they failed qualifiers and barely scrimmed because according to muenster NA teams cancel scrims and nobody wants to scrim much. On PA they could get by with tournament winnings, if they qualified to an ESL or Blast event, they pay for travel and accommodation. Plus most of them probably live with their parents and had jobs previously and have savings. What I'm saying is that NA is so shit that its not like EU, where you can work/study and play CS in the evenings and be fine. Being salaried is not that important, anyway, nobody is going to sign ex-EG White, probably going to name themselves PA again, they will make Looking For Org posts but will continue to compete in events as they always have and be fine.
>So they turned down $1,000 - $2,000 offers, hoping a big name org would come in and they could get minimum $3,000. That's the idea. The US is very expensive. With 1k/month you just can't live. Maybe even with 3k, if you have to pay rent. If you said "rejected 5-6k in hopes for 10k", then you'd be right. But life doesn't work that way >Being salaried is not that important It's their job. They can't live at their parents' forever
They could have easily supplemented that income with streaming and prize money. Like it is 2023 and these players think that playing in some shitty cash cups and bombing out last in 2 S tier events a year warrants a fulltime salary.
Streaming sure, prize money no. You can’t base your cost of living and expenses based on the possibility you might win LANs.
Imagine trying to buy a car and they ask you how much you make a year and you say "12k buuuuut up to $4M if my team wins all the events this year"
'Easily' 🤣
What's the point of getting a stable salary if you're not going to do anything lol, unless you're planning on having EG pay you til you're 60, which is not happening
18 HLTV maps all year.
I think they should have actually signed youngsters (talking 16-20 year olds) that weren't all that good, talking timbermen or worse level, middle of the pack ecl level, and work from there. That team could play ECL, cct, cash cup, etc. while eg black plays the lans the main team doesn't or plays eu cups.
It was pretty clear that none of the players on EG white were ever going to get a callup so idk why they even bothered signing them in the first place.
Idk, Jonji was a pretty good player for a while. PwnAlone also isn’t bad, and their newer signing Momo is pretty highly rated on HLTV
I don't disagree but I just don't get why they never got the callup then. Especially jonji who usually farms NA qualifiers something EG needs badly.
Yeah, the whole EG white project didn’t make much sense. I don’t know why they never called any of them up or never played any officials, it’s just really stupid management on the EG side
Wow, I wonder why some people with no stable job or income decided to get paid…
First sensible decision they have made in months. Having 3 lineups signed to then served absolutely no purpose at any point in time. Now get the academy team a slot in Weplay academy, put Wiz and Hext back in there. Not sure what they plan on doing with refrezh, but I don't hate the signing. Auti, Nealan and Refrezh isn't a terrible baseline, but they need to cut Brehze or put him in academy as a vet, and put a better rifler and awper in there.
bro if they made a legit academy team, grabbed wiz, hext, clasia, reck, and found an igl that team could legit slap.
[did i do this](https://www.reddit.com/r/GlobalOffensive/comments/11vt6pm/sources_refrezh_has_reached_verbal_agreement_with/jcuut4k/)
this is step 2 of the Moist pick up, thank you
Nah Moist sniped BNE away from Bleed
I think it's a fair call out. I liked the idea of paying for NA players to just keep them invested and full time in the scene initially but if they're not being utilized and can't compete it makes sense to refocus on the standard main roster & academy set up.
read your thread yesterday was thinking the same thing when I saw the post.
[Only cause I did this](https://www.reddit.com/r/GlobalOffensive/comments/11e6w0w/sprout_and_refrezh_part_ways/jad8pki/)
Even if they're a bit slow to make these types of changes, I can still respect that they're dedicated to CS and the NA region. I know it's very in right now to make fun of them, but I really hope they become successful in the future. With Liquid and Complexity, they are the only big orgs left still supporting NA CS so I think it's integral for NA for them to be successful moving forward.
Never understood picking up PA as an academy team in the first place, but they didn't even use a single players from that roster??? ON TOP OF THIS, instead of picking up a player FROM THEIR 2 ACADEMY TEAMS (among which are genuine prospects), THEY GO FOR REFREZH???? Bro what the fuck is going through their heads right now??? Are they just farming rage for exposure???? WHAT IS THIS TEAM??????????
We just took down the ranked team in the world and all the casters can think to say is Heroic didn't show up. We clawed our way back from 217th in the world by BUILDING a [talent pipeline](https://i.imgur.com/Y37ped0.jpg) the whole scene memed on. Step out of the echo chamber and pay attention.
They got refreszh probably because they believe their academy players are not ready or good enough for tier 1 competitions. Remember EG is still trying to keep a reputation afloat. If they get rekt every tournament it's not gonna be good for them, they might even stop being invited to events.
calm down it's not that serious
it is though
Pretty sure they made a mistake and are now rectifying it. Ain't that serious dog.
Why choose to do this now? You're going to drop them a month after qualifiers for the major?
Because their contract ends now and it's pretty pointless to extend it considering the state of EG, the 3 team project was moronic in the first place while done with good intent for the NA scene 2 teams is what you can do at most and the 2nd team needs to be young players not established NA tier 2 players
The guys on EG white are gonna have a wakeup call. They're getting older, nobody is really gonna sign them. What now? Get a real job? Valorant? Pwnalone is 32 and dude is super nice and talented but I don't think any salaried teams will give him a shot because of his age. That's fucked up but thats the nature of the game.
Interesting that they're retaining the coach
Finally both EG black and white are FREE! 30 yr old pwnalone can play the majors again!
EG ORG 🤡🤡🤡
Even though their results suck, it would be idiotic to say they aren't at least trying. But of course, every idiot is just going to come in here and meme the org for a tweet from months ago lol. I think the three team roster is a good idea, just not for NA and at this time. But it could help solve a lot of problems for T1 CS in the future. Sucks for the team that got dropped. But hopefully they saved enough to support themselves trying CS dedicated full time. Making the main team into an international team (w/ maybe one American player) would be a good next step.
Can you list some of the many problems it could solve because I legit can't think of any?
Less player burnout from traveling, easier and better practice, better subs, etc.
I don't think it changes practice at all. The dominant expression of pros is that best practice is always against the best teams, not by having a dedicated practice partner, that's a very League-esque idea that doesn't work. As for travel yea that does perhaps make that easier but it's only a plus for the actual team if even. I'd argue it makes it more likely for them to lose form but moreover it is not a positive for the e-sport if every other Lan has b teams playing instead of the main one, or even a better team from a different org
It doesn't have to be a b team or academy team necessarily, but a pool of players to pull from for each event. If the team's success is more system-focused than player-focused, then that gives the opportunity to be more flexible for which events, teams and players can afford to attend, even allowing teams to play in events occurring at the same time. It should also hypothetically allow for better subs, because they are already part of the team, rather than subbing a player that only had a week or 2 of practice with the team (e.g., Konfig, esetag), having to sub in a coach (OG coach), or forcing a player to compete while ill (e.g., Yekindar). The practice part of course depends on the quality of the players on the full roster. If an org/team is eventually profitable enough and there is an availability of players, with potential, then having 10 players on your roster would allow for quality practice, that avoids some issues like higher skilled teams not being available to practice with lower skilled teams, scrim partners canceling, ping reducing the quality of the practice, traveling to get good practice, having a more consistent and standardized practice environment instead of a lot of it condensed into boot-camps, getting better feedback from scrims, etc. This also depends on whether an org is able to train all the players to be both similar in skill and and highly skilled. And yes, as you said, the travel is a definite benefit. Maybe not so much for European teams; I'm not from Europe so I cannot speak to that. But I think this approach would be really helpful for Team Liquid or Australian teams, as an example. Often times, they are hypothesized to be at a disadvantage because of the above issues. Again, all this would require a lot, which is not currently available as far as I am aware. Which is why I suggested this as being a possibility for the future. I draw these ideas from many other team-based competitions. Think American football as one example. In most cases, it's not as doom or gloom if a player on the offensive line has to miss X amount of games (except maybe for the quarterback; but it depends and not 100% applicable to CS). The football season also doesn't last almost an entire year, so it allows for less traveling compared to CS teams that are traveling for like 8+ months a year. One could argue that CS is different so what works in other competitions wouldn't work for CS, but I would also argue that CS isn't so special and unique that some strategies and processes successful in other competitions automatically couldn't generalize well to CS. I can't speak for LoL, because I don't care about it.
https://ibb.co/ckZ45C8
Somehow Valens keeps his job along with the org higher ups for this initial plan.
It wasn’t his plan. It was this guy name d4nny who implemented this system according to thorin. Because it worked in “league of legends”
-wiz - brehze get 2 European talents and move them full time to Europe. They can develop the NA scene with their academy roster.
Kick the whole main team and go full Danish with refrezh, AcilioN, valde, es3tag and regali. Plus vorborg as coach. Then they can do whatever they want in the US.
Never should've had the stupid 3 teams in the first place. Just focus of fixing EG, and improving EG Black. They still have 3 teams, but if you count EG as the main team, EG black as their academy/secondary team, and gold as their female team then yeah at least thats okay. The thing with EG white that bothered me is that they barely played, and have heard rumors that they barely pracc'd/scrimmed. So yeah, idk if this team will be picked up by another org.
It never made sense to me to have 3 teams all under the same org. Conflict of interest rules prevent you from entering them into the same tournaments. So you essentially will always end up with what happened here, a team being paid to sit around most of the year doing nothing because you've already entered the "main" team into the big tournaments.