Snappi lashes out at BLAST over World Ranking

As we know, the first tournament in the second half of the season was the BLAST Premier Fall Groups 2023, and only BLAST franchise teams played in it, so a large part of the Tier 1 teams did not participate in the event. However, after the conclusion last July 23, the results directly affected the World Ranking published by HLTV.

As a result, ENCE’s IGL, Marco “Snappi” Pfeiffer, believes that BLAST manipulated the World Ranking by making team moves without others playing in the tournament.

Snappi lashes out at BLAST and HLTV

According to Snappi, the results of BLAST tournaments that only involve partner or franchise teams affect the CS:GO World Rankings, a “detrimental influence” on the entire competitive scene. On second thought, Snappi might be right in his allegations, as a tournament where only teams invited by the organizers participate should not affect the World Ranking position of those who did not participate.

As if manipulating the world rankings with a franchise league with 0 entries is a positive thing. Lol https://t.co/j7BLTTAqKn

— Marco Pfeiffer (@SnappiCSGO) July 25, 2023

However, this was not the only thing Snappi alleged in his Twitter posts. According to ENCE’s IGL, teams associated with BLAST will always have a lot of advantage over the rest since these are directly invited to the main events. At the same time, those not associated teams must play different qualifiers to qualify. Moreover, this is not all, but for these qualifiers, they must also be invited by BLAST, so it is a complicated way.

For those who don’t know, teams not associated with BLAST can only qualify for the finals in each season through the BLAST Showdown. However, those teams that want to play the Showdown must be invited by BLAST or win a Tier 2 online event, but on the condition that BLAST is associated. As a result, the work to be done by these teams is complicated and tedious. Because of all this, Snappi believes that tournaments organized by BLAST should not affect the CS:GO world rankings.

Not to forget that the most recent event before the player break was also a BLAST event, with the same fucking format.

— Marco Pfeiffer (@SnappiCSGO) July 25, 2023

This is not the first time Snappi has spoken out against BLAST.

The reality is that Snappi has always been against this format in the BLAST circuit and has always made it known through posts on his Twitter account. In the 2022 season, ENCE’s IGL also lashed out against BLAST when his team qualified for the 2022 Spring Showdown. At the time, the European squad had to win two qualifiers to make it to the Showdown, another qualifier for the Spring Final. As a result, the team had to play three different qualifiers to qualify for the season finals.

After qualifying from the qualifier, we qualified through the next qualifier. Now we are in the partner team relegation qualifier, happy we didn’t have to go through the qualifiers before the qualifiers like Mad Lions and Wolsung. GG to all the teams we played in the qualifiers.

— Marco Pfeiffer (@SnappiCSGO) March 27, 2022

On the other hand, this discussion about teams associated with tournament organizers is not new, as ESL, another organizing giant, also has its list of associated teams. Many in the gaming community, especially from non-partnered teams, always favor the CS:GO competitive scene undergoing some significant changes, especially so that Tier 2 teams can participate in major tournaments.

Finally, the competitive Counter-Strike ecosystem may change with the arrival of CS2, as Valve is trying to get ESL and BLAST to remove their exclusive circuits for partner teams. This is so that different teams worldwide have opportunities to fight at the highest competitive level.

Header: João Ferreira | PGL