English
Gamereactor
esports
Counter-Strike: Global Offensive

Cloud9's Shroud says players can exploit crowd noise at LANs

Ghosting seems to be a talking point in CS:GO right now.

Subscribe to our newsletter here!

* Required field
HQ

In esports events like CS:GO's ESL Pro League Season 5 finals in Dallas, Texas, the crowd is very close to the action, and so the players can hear their cheers and noise as well as see them if they look up, but recently there has been some controversy regarding ghosting, since it was noticed by outlets such as Dot Esports that G2 Esports had received information on the positions of North players from the crowd via shouts.

To give a brief explanation of the term ghosting, this is basically when outside influences display information to give positions away, whether that be spectators in the game or fans at a LAN, and this can be in the form of shouts, typed messages, and even physical messages held up on banners.

Now a fellow CS:GO pro Mike 'shroud' Grzesiek has revealed on a stream (a clip of which can be found here) that he uses the sounds from the crowd to help him in LANs, saying:

"When you're sneaking through a smoke, when you aim at a wall - that's when the audience helps you. Like me and Jordan [n0thing] do this thing, especially Jordan, when we're in like a 1v2 or a 1v1, we look at a wall. Why? Because if you look at a wall or look at a smoke, the crowd's going to get loud, and if the crowd gets loud, you know he's there. Easy. So yeah, people do that all the time."

It's clear not everyone feels the same about crowd exploits though, as North's Matthias 'MSL' Lauridsen tweeted about the incident at the ESL Pro League Season 5 finals when someone Astralis' dupreeh said that those shouting player locations should be kicked out of the arena, saying:

"Integrity. Hope no crowd will do that ever again. Fair to buuuhh and cheer whatever. But doing something that can hurt the game, f*** off."

Regardless of the views on shouting player locations and using the crowd to your advantage as a player, fans should definitely be careful, because if this continues, then it could risk the closeness fans have to the players being taken away, as organisers may opt to have them at a distance and/or behind soundproof barriers if they feel the integrity is under threat.

What do you make of this whole ghosting discussion?

Counter-Strike: Global Offensive

Related texts



Loading next content