If you haven’t heard the news, Check-Six released their Counter-Strike: Source squad earlier today. It’s a little surprising, although considering the amount of player movement in eSports maybe it shouldn’t be. The big issue this raises is about who owns the CGS spot.
From the thread on the CAL forums, it sounds like the team is staying together and they’re keeping the spot, not the organization. The players earned the spot, so that makes sense. The problem is whether a specific person (team leader) owns the spot, or if it’s given to the group. If it’s given to the group, how many players can be replaced before they lose it?
If the team replaces even one player, it’s technically not the same group that earned the spt. Do they still get to compete? What if they replace two players, or three? Most of us are familiar with CAL’s hijacking rule, which draws the line at two new players. (This season of Invite will be different, as mentioned, but the rule will stand at three returning players for the rest of the league.) But for the purposes of CGS, I don’t know if even that’s acceptable.
Let’s illustrate with a hypothetical. Say Check-Six’s old team decides they’re done with gaming. Two players do some soul-searching and find their true passion is making designer dog clothes. The other three become so jaded with professional gaming they feel it’s not worth the effort to continue. What’s to stop those three players from, say, contacting GoldenPalace.com and arranging to play at the qualifier with two bikini clad models. Would it be entertaining? Probably, but it would also prevent a team that actually wanted to be there from having the spot. And considering the CGS is working hard to be the first worldwide, professional eSports league, having a gag like that at your inaugural qualifiers probably isn’t their idea of a good joke.
I’m not trying to insinuate that the old Check-Six squad would do anything like this, because I don’t think they would. And, like I said, it looks like the team is going to stay together. But I also think the CGS needs to come out and make a specific rule for this kind of situation. The rest of their games are all single-player, and Source already has a couple special considerations (such as the drafting of teams, not players).
Personally, I think the CGS should take the hardest stance: don’t let any team play if they don’t have the original five qualifying members. Don’t get me wrong, there are always exceptions – a team shouldn’t be penalized if a player has a personal tragedy or some other extenuating circumstance. To that end there should be a way for a team to contact the league to get approval for a new player. But there isn’t any incentive for them, as a league, to allow teams into the tournament after replacing players. The teams that become CGS franchises will be able to do that anyway, and it just adds the potential for confusion (who’s playing with who), or disappointing performances by teams that had a recent roster problem. Since the CGS has so much power in this situation (guaranteed salaries), it’s probably in their best interest to just put the smackdown on player movement before the qualifiers.
I’ll try to contact CGS about the issue. If I get a response I’ll add it to the end of this post and make a new post about it to make sure everybody sees it. Until then, good luck to Check-Six and their former team, and I’ll have some more CGS related posts coming up along with a recap of the CEVO playoffs.
