After 8 Years, G2 Esports Wins IEM Katowice For The First Time
G2 has won the IEM Katowice trophy and the $400,000 prize, marking the organization’s first-ever triumph at this competition. G2 Esports has been participating in IEM tournaments since 2015, but until this past weekend, they had never been able to claim a victory. G2 achieved a 19-map win run, the second-longest in CSGO esports history, while going on an unstoppable rampage of destruction. Now G2 has achieved a significant victory with this one, and since December 2022, they have gone undefeated.
G2 won the BLAST Premier World Final late last year, defeating Team Liquid in the championship match to take home a prize worth $500,000. As an organization that has not generated any significant results before this in more than three years, G2 has experienced an astounding amount of positive outcomes in just a couple months.
At IEM Katowice, it was up to Heroic to put an end to G2’s winning streak. Heroic won one map in the Grand Final, which did little to impede the European team. Coincidentally, Natus Vincere’s previous run, which was ranked second in terms of the longest map victory streak ever, was also broken by Heroic in 2021. Some of the top CSGO players triumphantly displayed the trophy as the dust settled at IEM Katowice, commemorating a performance that broke records.
This was somewhat of a comeback for G2, as at the competition in Katowice last year, the team lost to FaZe Clan in a 0–3 whitewash and dropped to second place. Strangely, one guy was crucial to both G2’s victory this year and FaZe Clan’s triumph last year. Justin “jks” Savage became the only player in history to win two trophies at the recurrent event with two different organizations with his second back-to-back IEM Katowice victory.
With G2’s victory, a spot at IEM Cologne, which is scheduled to take place in July of this year and offer a $1,000,000 prize pool, is now assured. IEM Katowice 2024 is assured for G2 if they win IEM Cologne, which might complete the circle for the organization. However, that is merely aspirational, and it will be a tremendous ask of the team, or any team now participating in CSGO esports.
This past weekend, CSGO utterly destroyed its all-time Steam player peak record, registering a staggering 1,320,000 concurrent players. It’s an impressive number for the platform and it shows that CSGO is still quite popular ten years later. People have been speculating for the past few days as to whether Hogwarts Legacy would surpass milestones set by enormous, heavyweight games like CSGO. Nevertheless, despite the wizarding game’s best efforts, it could only reach a peak player count of about 879,000. Although it is still an incredible achievement, it cannot compare to CSGO.
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