I completely get Cooper’s point, and I agree with him. But with CS we also need to be honest about what the game has become over the last few years. Counter-Strike is a cheater game now. It’s a farming game. It’s an HvH game. It’s a cheat-testing game. It’s a boosting game. It’s a matchfixing game. There are people who genuinely have more fun loading into CS to test cheats against other cheaters than legit players have trying to climb Premier. At this point, playing Valve MM without at least some kind of radar/wall information almost feels like loading into a round without buying a rifle. That’s how normalised cheating has become. So, at least for me, the surprising thing in 2026 is no longer that someone wakes up and decides to cheat in Counter-Strike. The surprising thing is that someone wakes up and decides to play it legitimately. Because if you’re a normal player, what exactly is the incentive? If you’re not a streamer, content creator, pro, or someone making money from the game, why would you willingly queue Premier and spend your time and mental energy dealing with this? Most legitimate players either leave the game or move to FACEIT. Valve matchmaking has become something many people only touch because they need to show how bad it is. Even when Valve adds a genuinely fun new mode the same problem follows it. And then there’s the wider ecosystem around the game: farming, boosting, matchfixing and people trying to make money through every gap that has been left open for years. So yes, cheating being an industry is insane. But in Counter-Strike, the bigger failure is that cheating has been allowed to become part of the culture around the game itself. The people who love CS should not be the ones feeling like there is no place left for them in Counter-Strike.