Professional CS:GO players have denied tournament organizer BLAST access to voice comms and video screen recordings, the Counter-Strike Professional Players’ Association (CSPPA) announced today.
The announcement was made ahead of the first match of the BLAST Premier Fall finals, Vitality vs. mousesports. It may have caught the tournament organizer by surprise since the desk host and analysts were presenting the pre-game when CSPPA released a statement on Twitter.
BLAST has implemented several features in 2020, including players giving access to the organizer to record and store their voice comms and video screen recordings.
“Ultimately, players have experienced that voice comms were shared with analyst and others which has led to sensitive tactical information and personal information being shared among people in the community,” CSPPA said.
As for the video screen recordings, a feature implemented to safeguard the integrity of the game, the players claim it allegedly affects the performance of their PCs while other measures wouldn’t. CSPPA also said the recordings contain sensitive and personal information and the players have no control over who can access it, how it’s stored, and when BLAST deletes it.
CSPPA said it has repeatedly tried to get BLAST to talk with the players, but the organizer has allegedly declined to discuss this with them. “They have left us no choice but to make a stand here,” player reps from all BLAST Premier Fall finals teams said. “Hopefully, they hear our concerns this way.”
For the last 30 minutes, the BLAST stream says it’s waiting for the players to join the TeamSpeak. The tournament organizer hasn’t provided an official statement on social media, so it’s unknown whether the players and BLAST will reach an agreement today.
Update Dec. 8 11:50am CT: Mousesports’ player and one of CSPPA’s board members chrisJ said mousesports vs. Vitality will start soon and that BLAST will start talks with the CSPPA.
