CS team overcomes new obstacle to win a round—getting jump-scared by the government

Party Astronauts were thrashing Imperial on Overpass during the BLAST Fall Showdown when they were unexpectedly thrown a curveball from the United States government.

The National Emergency Alert test went off today, as our American readers probably already know. But it was broadcast right in the middle of Party Astronauts’ attempt to close out the final Imperial player to go up 11-2.

“I can’t hear him,” said Wesley “viz” Harris, as the team frantically checked corners to see if he was rushing them down during the audio cue debacle. When the alert was finally over and the round completed, Party Astronauts burst out into laughter at the situation, showing some resolve in the middle of one of the most bizarre tech issues ever seen on a professional esports broadcast. Thankfully, BLAST captured audio of the event.

The test alert, scheduled for 1:20pm CT on today but airing a couple minutes before that, was announced yesterday by FEMA and the FCC. The alert included a note to ignore, but that didn’t stop phones across the United States from giving everyone a little jump-scare during their work day.

Fortunately, Party Astronauts closed out the map, and took a 1-0 lead in the series. To make matters worse for Imperial, not only did they lose the round the alert came through on, as well as the map; Overpass was their map pick. The loss put them squarely in the danger zone for a 2-0 Party Astronauts upset.

The BLAST Fall Showdown is the last professional Counter-Strike tournament that will be played on CS:GO. IEM Sydney will be played on CS2. Given Global Offensive‘s preposterously buggy launch, and player complaints about CS2, it’s only natural that some kind of outside tech issue would disrupt a CS match during this strange transition period to a new game. Thankfully, it didn’t seem to matter all too much.