One of the possibly most controversial organizations in CS:GO, iBUYPOWER, has been teasing a potential return to the game for Counter-Strike 2, though, fans believe it’s just bait.
The organization asked who it should sign if it was putting a CS2 team together on Aug. 2, which was then considered a joke. But, on Aug. 8, it replied to one of the fans, pointing out they might be working on something. The reply quickly made it to Reddit, though, and fans debunked the possibility.
Players underlined how iBP wasn’t able to pay their players back in 2014, which makes a potential CS2 return doubtful, given the reputation they have. “I doubt iBUYPOWER has the money to invest in a team worth caring about with salaries and buyouts being as high as they are,” another fan claimed.
Besides, fans also said the organization has been doing these kinds of baits for months now. On top of that, they believe its reputation “will always be tarnished,” by a match-fixing scandal from 2014, adding yet another reason as to why its comeback to CS2 seems like a bad idea.
The scandal included the current iBP lineup in August 2014, which featured players like DaZeD, swag, and Skadoodle. The turmoil was due to the fact that iBP was found guilty of match-fixing in season five of the CEVO Professional League. All players received lifetime bans from Valve, except for Skadoodle, who declined to profit from throwing the game.
The organization itself wasn’t to blame for the scandal, but its players at the time were. Nevertheless, its name has been since then associated with it.
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IBP did participate in the first four CS:GO Majors and had its stickers produced for them. These are currently the most expensive stickers in the game, especially Holo edition from EMS One: Katowice 2014, for which there are buy offers on the Steam market for up to $2,000 each. For this reason, some fans would like iBP to return, just to have a new surge of its stickers, given it would qualify for any of the future CS2 Majors.
Published: Aug 9, 2023 04:35 am