After reaching the end of the Roobet Cup 2023 and the Thunderpick World Championship 2023, some have been left with the feeling that they’re a little pointless. These online CS2 tournaments have come along with little fanfare, despite a massive $750,000 prize pool between the two.

It’s not all bad, though. We want to talk about the positives and negatives of these online tournaments, and explore why fans and players alike might not be taking them too seriously.

The Negatives

The biggest problem is that even the players barely seem to care. Games are played like pugs, and most treat it like glorified practice. Take FaZe for example. Despite winning $250,000 for winning the Thunderpick World Championship 2023, there’s absolutely more glory for conquering a LAN like IEM Sydney 2023 (with its $100,000 winner’s prize).

There’s more glory on LAN. Credit: Helena Kristiansson | © ESL

We certainly haven’t learned anything new about these teams. With a LAN, you learn how teams react to the pressure of a crowd, how they soak in their every reaction on the big stage and use it to either flourish or flounder. It’s no real surprise to anyone that Virtus.pro and FaZe’s team of superstars can practically smurf their way to Grand Finals from the comfort of their own home. When FaZe came up against teams like SAW during the Thunderpick World Championship 2023 – yeah, of course we expected them to win.

Then there’s just the inherent issues with online play. Constant disconnects caused havoc throughout these tournaments, and Heroic even had to have a match postponed mid-game due to a power outage. High latency presents its own problems with competitive integrity, but again, these aren’t exclusive to these newer online CS2 tournaments.

The Positives

We’ve been pretty doom and gloom so far, but it’s not all terrible. Online CS2 tournaments are a great way to stress test the new game so that Valve can fix its many issues much faster. We’ve already seen comments from various pros about how the game feels online vs LAN, and putting it through high-stakes competitive matches is the best way to establish that.

Image Credits: Roobet and Thunderpick, modified by Daniel Morris.

We liked the use of broadcast talent, too. Roobet Cup 2023 took the route of using established talent like moses, HenryG, and Anders, which gave the entire affair an air of legitimacy. Thunderpick World Championship 2023 took a different approach, using younger talent like GrimyRannarr and Ne0kai. This gives them the chance to shine at a (mostly) Tier 1 event, allowing them to improve and establish themselves. These guys might not be ready for the biggest tournaments yet, but we love Thunderpick’s commitment to giving fresh talent a chance.

These tournaments are always going to be difficult to legitimize fully but ultimately, online CS2 tournaments are always going to exist. After all, Tier 2 and below teams can’t afford the cost of traveling to LANs all year round. But will they ever be heralded as the next big thing, considered S-Tier events alongside BLAST and ESL events? Probably not.