ESL implement measures to cease crowd influence at Rio Major
The tournament organizer has been forced to take action to stop fans giving players on stage information.
The crowd at IEM Rio Major 2022 Challengers Stage has been amazing throughout the first two days showcasing how much Brazil loves Counter-Strike. However, the tournament organizer has been forced to take action to stop fans from giving players on the stage information during games. After some crowd cheers were reportedly influencing rounds on the server, ESL has decided to disable minimaps and x-rays for fans in the Venue.
According to a statement by ESL’s Senior Director of Game Ecosystems for CSGO, Shaun Clark, this was decided to combat the crowd influencing the players during a game.
“Tournament integrity is the most important factor for us. Over the past days, we’ve experienced incidents that we believe have put this at risk. We’ve been communicating to the audience the level of importance this holds and have done so throughout the tournament.”
“Earlier this evening we felt the need to remove the mini map and x-ray vision for the on-site audience for a number of rounds in order to protect the integrity of the tournament. Despite doing this, we do not want to ruin the experience for our viewership and the audience.” – Shaun Clark, ESL Senior Director of Game Ecosystems for CS:GO.
The fans at the IEM Rio Major have been electric, and this isn’t the first time that crowds have been called out for yelling information. For example, at the BLAST Premier event in Copenhagen, the Danish crowd was trying to help their favorite team by yelling “he’s close to you!”.
Shaun Clark gave a further warning to the audience regarding future instances, stating that ESL will “continue to uphold this.” How far they’re willing to go to make sure stuff like this doesn’t happen is unclear.
