If there’s one thing you can rely on Reddit for, it’s a cacophony of cutting comments from an angry pitchfork-wielding mob.
UK esports organisation FM-eSports and the UK Counter-Strike sphere are the latest to fall victim to the Reddit masses, after FM beat Team EndPoint 3-0 in the final of the Counter-Strike open at Insomnia59 on the weekend.
Don’t get me wrong – Reddit can be a great forum for like-minded people and a great way of sharing information and ideas.
It’s just a shame a lot of the like-minded people like to rant and moan and sometimes make things sound much worse than they actually are.
This post on the CSGO subreddit, uploaded by a user called Briggley and titled ‘Champions of the i59 UK LAN are super happy!’ is a light-hearted sarcastic poke at a largely unsmiling winning team.
No harm done, surely? It’s nothing new – at i58 in the summer, Kostas “tsack” Theodoropoulos (second left, below) was caught looking like he couldn’t give less of a shit about winning the UK Masters with Caz Esports.
There’s a part of one of our video interviews here about his unhappy demeanor.
But a lot of Reddit users on the post felt it’d be a great idea to weigh in on UK esports and point out its problems.
There was a lot of generalising, insults thrown and criticism aimed towards the players and the organisational structure in the UK, and the lack of huge prize pools.
UK Masters project manager Charlie Tizard didn’t take some of the criticism well (and for good reason – Multiplay and UK Masters have invested in the UK scene well this year, with some decent prize pools for tournaments).
He said: “I’m super proud of both FM-eSports, Team EndPoint and all the other competitors in the UK Masters and at Insomnia. Flame UK Counter-Strike all you like, teams will keep playing and keep striving to improve as long as there is the domestic support.
“I don’t blame these guys for looking tired one bit. Playing CS all weekend would wreck me too. This was taken late on third day of playing CS all day, give the guys a break.”
Charlie also hinted at a good level of prize money next year.
“There’s going to be an incredible amount of money available to UK teams in the coming year and I’m very happy to be a part of it,” he added.
“The UK Masters is designed to start to stabilise the UK scene, allow teams to stick together and provide them with something to practice and play for all year round. Alongside UK Masters there’s also Multiplay’s Insomnia, ESL UK Premiership, EpicLan, and some more upcoming leagues/events in 2017.”
Dom is an award-winning writer and finalist of the Esports Journalist of the Year 2023 award. He graduated from Bournemouth University with a 2:1 degree in Multi-Media Journalism in 2007.
As a long-time gamer having first picked up the NES controller in the late ’80s, he has written for a range of publications including GamesTM, Nintendo Official Magazine, industry publication MCV and others. He worked as head of content for the British Esports Federation up until February 2021, when he stepped back to work full-time on Esports News UK and offer esports consultancy and freelance services. Note: Dom still produces the British Esports newsletter on a freelance basis, so our coverage of British Esports is always kept simple – usually just covering the occasional press release – because of this conflict of interest.
