With the Singapore Major approaching, the race to qualify has put tournament selection and Valve’s ranking rules under scrutiny. Speaking to Hotspawn from Bucharest, Scrawny shared his thoughts on FUT’s rise, G2’s struggles and Astralis’ roster changes, before discussing his partnership with launders and why donk and ZywOo’s performances still feel special.
FUT hadn’t played a match in about 54 days, then returned to beat TYLOO, Liquid and Vitality. You recently said they had a genuine chance of winning Bucharest. What makes them such a strong contender?
I think with FUT, at its core, immediately they’re a strong contender because they have a very good in-game leader. I’m a huge fan of Krabeni. They have a long-standing chemistry with the core of this team in dem0n, dziugss and Krabeni, and they’ve made the right roster change, I believe, to elevate themselves. They didn’t have to go for an overhaul. When we look at teams that feel like they need changes, sometimes we don’t know what the right move is. But unfortunately, cmtry, performance-wise, was just that low-hanging fruit. They benefit immensely from bringing in a player with a wealth of experience in SunPayus.
This is somebody who knows how to win, who knows how to play on an international project, and has shown us clearly that he still has the mechanical and individual ability to elevate this lineup. That also doesn’t give credit, I think, to xfl0ud, who’s a more recent addition. It’s just a team that, when you look at it on paper, makes sense from top to bottom. It has been growing and slowly improving over time, and is right now hitting that new wave of momentum off this SunPayus signing. Maybe that 60 days off, or whatever it was, also helped them. We know that they had a good boot camp coming into this event.
I would have loved for them to have finally shaken off their demons versus Vitality with apEX there and it being the full roster. But I think regardless of that, for this team, that’s also just a huge boost of confidence that they’ve earned with that victory. I think it’s very easy to love FUT at this moment because we always want to see these up-and-coming teams be able to break through, get past the gatekeepers, prove to the next generation of players that the evolution can be there. I just respect FUT for a lot of reasons, in making the right decisions at the right times.
Hell, even just giving cmtry as much time as they did, I think is fair, because this was a core that had stuck together for as long as they were. Lots of positive things to say about FUT at the moment, but I do also give credit to what I think is a fantastic IGL in Krabeni.
FUT went 3-0, but losing in the quarterfinals would leave them short of the five matches needed for their new roster to be recognised. Would you consider that a flaw in the VRS system?
Yeah, I think it’s a flaw in the VRS system. I know that the VRS system is obviously still so new that Valve is trying to work out all these little kinks. When you see something being abused, like the Sashi situation, we get these hotfixes, and then it’s weird because we get the BC.Game exception. I do not envy Valve in having to try to fine-tune and tweak the VRS system, but I do think everybody needs to remember that this is so new that these kinds of little errors and gaps are going to pop up. I think what it will require is a responsive and attentive Valve to make sure they do what is, quote-unquote, “right.”
It would be a real shame to see people miss out on a Major due to technicalities, in a way. I know we need to have safeguards in place to make sure that roster changes can’t be abused as well, because that’s a whole other problem. But it is a very awkward one right now. It’s a little bit messy. To a lesser degree, even jL coming through and swooping the sticker money from apEX is not as dire, it’s not as big of a deal. I think apEX will be just fine. But it is still, I think, a symptom of a new system. We have to realise that VRS is so fresh. In the grand scheme of things, I’ve personally still really enjoyed what VRS has done for us. So awkward, but not the end of the world, really.
Valve granted an exception to BC.Game and s1mple. Do you think that sets a dangerous precedent where certain teams can receive special treatment in Major qualification?
In some ways, yes. It’s just always a little scary when last-second changes can occur. I think I’m more comfortable with a flaw occurring once and then being patched out after the event. But these last-second, mid-season changes, and then also exceptions with the one-team reversal, it does feel in some ways mishandled. Again, I think that’s just because I lean more towards the school of thought that if somebody finds a flaw, ride it out and then patch at the end of seasons. It feels like we have this system where it is six months of competition coalescing into a Major, and after the Major you can patch everything out.
With that said, I also didn’t like what Sashi did. BC.Game were, I think, a little more sly about it. Sashi was very blatant, and I think that’s why it got exposed and why it got hotfixed. But my general school of thought is more so: wait until after Majors. Let’s wrap up the season, and then make sure things can’t happen a second time after.
FaZe boosted their Singapore Major qualification chances to around 90% by beating teams such as K27 and Alliance. Is VRS increasingly rewarding smart tournament selection over actual strength?
Yes, most certainly. I always think of messioso. He’s a great example of somebody who just has his ear to the ground. It eludes me right now, but I know somebody, I think it was HEROIC, just signed one of these VRS wizards from Twitter. I wish I could remember the name of the person at the moment. Just the fact that VRS wizards are getting signed by organisations to make sure orgs make the right decisions, I think there is no further evidence needed that VRS has become this very overbearing thought that orgs have to make sure they’re in tune with. That’s going to reward teams that have that sort of support staff, absolutely. It’s a very interesting time to watch VRS play out with how important these small LANs have become.
G2 went 0-3 in Bucharest, while SunPayus went 3–0 with FUT. Do you think G2 misdiagnosed their problems when they decided to replace him?
I think that’s definitely possible with the way SunPayus has hit the ground running, that maybe they didn’t quite make the right move. It was tough to watch G2 because there were, at times, still showings of individual level, but it was those really nitty-gritty late-round moments where I feel like you saw the connective tissue between the players either break down or prove to not be in place yet. I’m thinking versus Aurora, some of those last-second Banana hits where players just felt a little disjointed.
I would say yes, they may have misdiagnosed their weaknesses. Or unfortunately, I was thinking to myself, maybe huNter- doesn’t know how to integrate an AWPer quite like r1nkle into this system, too. I don’t think we’ve seen him prove that he can IGL with that sort of an AWP in his system. I think that responsibility within G2, especially with sAw as the coach, falls on him to make sure that happens as well, because I’m sure he’s being asked and evaluated for his opinion on what the solution to that roster would have been.
I think they’re in a tough spot. They bomb into this one. They are on an absolute downtrend. sAw came out with the HLTV interview saying, “I feel like we’ve stagnated or even taken a step back.” I think that’s his polite way of recognising they are moving in the wrong direction, because the reality is they didn’t just stagnate. This team has dropped off, and they’re doing it at unfortunately the worst time of the season. The runway now for G2 going into Singapore is incredibly short, and there’s no real reason to believe that they’re going to get to the Major and look significantly better to a level that they’re going to be a serious competitor.
BetBoom have beaten Spirit and NAVI, and you singled out Magnojez’s performance. Are people overlooking a potential superstar because he doesn’t play for a bigger organisation?
No, I think Magnojez actually is accurately valued at the second. He, in this current iteration of BetBoom, is flying off the charts. But I do believe that people see it for what it is, and BetBoom, yes, are a smaller org, but I really am a fan of this team right now, and it’s not just because of Magnojez. I really like this team because I think each of these individuals has a solid story and a valuable wealth of experience in different versions of their careers that is now all coming together. It almost feels like they’re all having this eureka, finally moment.
That’s what I love about BetBoom. It’s so easy to cheer for a lot of these individuals because they’ve been here before. They’ve felt highs, had to take extensive steps back, and have now returned together. We don’t really talk about [player name unclear]. We don’t really talk about s1ren, but that’s because of the roles they play on the team. Because we don’t think about them when we think about BetBoom, that’s why I believe Magnojez is valued accurately. He is a driving force in this team, and with Thunderpick and now with PGL Masters Bucharest, I believe zorte is also now stepping up alongside him, exceeding his average as of late, but also showing us again some of the peaks that we knew he had.
You go back to the Paris Major in 2023. He’s, I believe, the highest-rated player in Stage 2 of that Major. That felt like his breakout moment. He felt like the biggest AWP from that region at the time, and now they’re doing it side by side with BetBoom. BetBoom doesn’t get recognised as a big organisation in the space. They don’t have the pull of some of the bigger names, but I like that about them because it almost feels like the pressure is off.
Right alongside FUT, in the same way, you could call dem0n a huge star too. Him and SunPayus coming into the playoffs of Bucharest as top-five-rated players in the group stage, a very stacked event as well, and yet we have those names right in there. zorte, dem0n, SunPayus, ZywOo and donk. That’s your top five. I always love that there’s an org with slightly fewer expectations, but clearly just as good players.
Astralis replaced HooXi with siuhy just days after winning their first LAN since 2019, and have now recalled jabbi to meet Major eligibility requirements. Do you think replacing HooXi was really a sporting decision?
I think that’s a decision that comes from broken chemistry within the Astralis players. That doesn’t come from having any kind of insider knowledge. That just comes from an armchair assessment, because it is weird timing, like you said, to have a victory and then to cut your IGL. I feel like I saw a cryptic tweet from their sports psychologist as well at the event they won right before that change happened. I can’t quote it off the top of my head, but that’s, I think, one of the things that also confirms what it looks like from the outside, where there was just something weird going on.
It felt like that roster, as a formula, had moved past its expiration date. Sometimes you can win an event like that, but still very much recognise your ceiling. I sort of feel like that’s maybe what happened with Astralis. Even a toxic work environment can produce results, and for whatever reason, to make that change when they did, critically ahead of a Major as well that they’re on the brink of qualifying for, or have, but require things to fall in place, it’s definitely not a work environment I would want to be part of at the moment. I’ll put it that way. That’s from an outsider perspective. It just feels like something’s rotten in order to have that roster change happen the way it did and when it did.
You and launders have developed one of CS2’s most recognisable casting partnerships. What is something you fundamentally disagree on when watching Counter-Strike?
I think what Mohan and I most often disagree on would be what exactly constitutes a “good” result. For example here in Bucharest, I was pretty excited for Liquid to be able to prove their ability against the likes of MOUZ, while he saw the nature of their defeats as just another example of the same problems these players have always been plagued by. It feels like sometimes I see things with rose-tinted glasses while he can be harder to impress, or convince.
With players like donk and ZywOo delivering extraordinary performances so frequently, is it becoming harder to make genuinely special moments feel special?
I don’t think it’s harder because they are still just in this league of their own. They have given us such an incredible race to the top as to who is number one. We’re so lucky right now in the Counter-Strike space to be able to debate that, as per last year. Luckily, we have two of them putting up these incredible moments and performances, and it also feels like the quality of Counter-Strike behind them is in a really good place as we get closer to this Major. PGL Masters Bucharest feels like a really nice turning point where I’m looking at teams and I’m seeing these improvements and I’m thinking, “By God, we’ve got real contenders.”
I don’t think it makes it feel less special because it’s still such a unique race between those two. When you take into consideration the biggest moments on the biggest stages with massive crowds, those are still forever going to be the most special moments. It’s just nice to see that even in a studio environment, we can have a high quality of play. With the exception of 9z and G2 here at Bucharest, those ones disappointed. But no, I wouldn’t say it feels any less special. I think that’s coming from the perspective of somebody who loves their job and just loves this game.
