The association was born in 2018. Tell us how the idea emerged, how were you contacted and what were the initial objectives of the Association.

The general idea was quite simple. There was a lot of abuse on the CS scene, whether it was in contracts, tournaments, non-payment of cashprizes and so forth, which was quite usual in esports. An initiative was started to create an association of players on CS:GO. Some active players, who had an extensive knowledge of the scene, who had been present for a long time, were contacted to create something and try to have an impact.

The idea was that the players should not be left out when the big leagues were coming, that they would not be stepped on between structures, contracts and tournament organizers.

We remember that one of the most vocal at the time was Scott "SirScoots" Smith. Is he really the one who started the project, or did he get involved along the way?

The initiative came from Xyp9x I think, who was in contact with Michael Døi. After that Mads Øland, the current CEO, joined us. Then some players were contacted, as well as SirScoots, who was already an active voice on the scene and didn't mince his words. He too is a person who, above all, wishes the best for the players and who had a great knowledge of the scene and its actors as a former boss of EG.

So there was this group of people who came out, who really wanted to be active and wanted to structure the players' association to start doing things together. We absolutely wanted the players to have a voice in the creation of the big leagues that were coming. Otherwise, the structures and the organizers would have negotiated among themselves and the players would have been ignored. Something had to be created so that there would be a balance between all actors.

When we go to the CSPPA's website today, there is still SirScoots in the organigram, but also Sean Gares. Are they still active?

SirScoots is still very active with us and with the board in general. Sgares was there for a while, but I think he was recruited by a tournament organizer at one point, Flashpoint I think, although I'm not sure. But, basically, if we kept him, the integrity would have been tainted. If you're working for a tournament organizer in any way and you're trying to defend the players at the same time, you're going to have a conflict of interest.

He worked with us for a while, he's someone who knows the scene extremely well and is very smart, but he put himself aside while he was employed at a TO. Now he seems to be going towards Valorant so I don't know what his plans are. But SirScoots is clearly still very active.

You said the CSPPA was created to really give the players a voice in the creation of the big leagues. Now that these leagues have been created, what is the current role, the attributions of the CSPPA in the CS:GO ecosystem?

It's a bit complicated, because I can't talk about everything, we're under NDAs for some things. Overall, the CSPPA, through Michael Døi and Mads Øland, is in constant discussions with ESL, with whom we have the most contacts, but also with Flashpoint and BLAST at a certain level. We have agreements with almost all organisers. What this means is that we are consulted on certain points. One organization we work well with at the moment is ESL, we have a lot of exchanges with them and we have a real influence on a lot of things at the tournament level.

For example, we often talk about the format of the tournaments, the global calendar, especially the player break. There are also legal aspects, which are more complex, and which I can't talk about too much publicly. But there are things that the Association has been able to simplify for ESL or other organizers.

But you can't regulate everything, you can't take control of ESL or the other organizers and say "the tournament is going to be exactly like this, on this date, there won't be more than X tournaments in the year", you can't do that, it's their product and their business. What we want is to find a balance so that the players don't get jammed.

If tomorrow, ESL arrives and says "we don't put any more cashprizes for your tournaments and we give all the money to your structure which has to pay you a substantial salary", that's where we will intervene, to say that there must be cashprizes, that there must be something that rewards the competition. We try to maintain a certain balance for the players.

Isn't that what happened with BLAST recently, who slashed their cashprize in favor of the structures?

For me there are several parts to this problem. On the one hand, there is the ecosystem of teams on CS:GO that are currently not profitable, or even at a balance. Many are losing a lot of money. It's an investment, a way to make your club evolve, but realistically, financially, CS:GO is very expensive.

So the solution that has been found by BLAST and the structures is to try to find a way to better monetize and make these investments profitable, and not only cashprize. So that's the first aspect, linked to the ecosystem around the game, and which requires a real debate. Because if you want CS's esport to survive in the long term, everyone has to get their act together, otherwise the structures will leave and everything will collapse. It's a real legitimate question.

Then, there is a second part, more focused on communication, from the beginning of BLAST up until today. From the very start of BLAST, when teams were approached to sign with them and play in their league for several years, there were promises that influenced the players. If one league offers you $10 million, a random number, and they don't tell you that in a year or two the cash prize will be divided by 2, while another league offers you the same thing knowing that it won't budge, it can clearly influence the structures and players to make those choices.

This is not something that was discussed in the discussions between BLAST, the players and the structures, it just happened today. They're talking about the impact of COVID on the structures, which is a reality, because they're losing even more money than if there were LANs.

Is that a reality? Is the loss of team revenue not offset by the savings in terms of travel, accommodation, LANs?

As for the teams, I don't think so because the structures pay very little for accommodation, it's mainly the organizers who manage all that. Afterwards, I don't necessarily know the whole structure of an organization because I've never been on that side, but I have a global idea as a player. But I think everyone has been impacted.

What people like to see, even if the viewership is still okay in the online era, are the tournaments, are the players interacting, the emotions it creates, everything that doesn't exist on the Internet. Of course, sponsors are less interested in the current CS, so they put less money, it's the situation we have to deal with.

To come back to BLAST, we can wonder if they would have done that if COVID hadn't happened. In that case, the problem would not have been the same, because it means that they had this plan from the beginning. Maybe the people in the teams knew it, maybe they didn't, but certainly the players didn't know about it. And we also notice that other tournaments don't change their cashprize.

This kind of thing could have influenced the decision to sign with this or that league for 3 or 4 year partnerships, knowing that the cashprize could be cut in the years to come. This is the part that is much more problematic, because you have to be able to find out how the ecosystem works. A better balance is needed so that everyone can get their fair share, otherwise the bubble may burst.

We saw that, following this announcement, the CSPPA issued a press release on Twitter but, apart from that, concretely, how can the Association apply pressure?

These are things that are under discussion at the moment, for the moment there isn't a definitive decision. One of the problems with the CSPPA is that the players who are members of the board are all active and have extremely busy schedules, especially with all the tournaments, leagues, games. It's very complicated to get everyone on the same schedule. Unfortunately, things can't move forward very quickly for this reason.

What we're trying to do is to expand the number of people, especially top-level players and teams that are in these leagues, that we're talking to, to get better feedback and to move forward faster than we do now. Having discussions, talking about the legal aspects, understanding the implications, having an informed opinion, it really takes a lot of time. You can't make simple decisions, as I often read: "Have the players go on strike and all the problems will be solved". It can't work like that, you want to create a trusting relationship with the organizers to build something together. We don't want to constantly fight against them.

On BLAST itself and what we can do, I don't have the answer because we're still discussing all this. For me, the most important thing, beyond the money, is the number of tournaments and the formats. On the money aspect, I think we need a more open discussion, with all the players, to better understand why it was done, why the players were not included in the discussion.

I'm sure there are a lot of players who understand the situation, I've talked about it with my teammates at OG, and it's understandable that TOs are impacted. The players aren't idiots, the top teams are all very well paid, nobody has a money problem, it's fair for everybody, so there can be a real discussion to get everybody to agree.

But on the other hand, you have to get out of this circle where the structures and the organizers talk together, and the players are excluded. Because today it's the cashprize, but tomorrow it can be the format, like instead of playing bo3 we'll only play bo5, and we'll only be able to play one league because it's going to last 6 months, and so on. The players have to be included in the different stages, otherwise we don't know where we're going. For us, that's the most important point. Afterwards, we're open to discuss everything, and that's where we can have an influence if we come to the table united, which should be doable.

To follow up on the importance of players, we can look at the organization of the association. There is the Players' Council of which you are a member, and there are the higher-ups, mainly Mads Øland and Michael Døi. 

How are the responsibilities distributed? Who does what? How can you, as players, make sure that the association's executives represent your interests and concerns, knowing that they are not players or former players?

For starter, I think it's very hard to have former players at the head of such an association. There aren't many former players because esport is still young. And retired players who would want to do that, I know extremely few people like that at the moment. On the other hand, Mads and Michael play a catalytist role for us.

Their goal is to convey what we want as players, and then pass it on to the organizers. They can propose things, plans, ideas, but if we, the players and especially the Players' Council, don't agree, they will change their plans and listen to what we are going to say. They serve to facilitate the transmission of our ideas to the tournament organizers.

They will also take care of the legal aspects, the meetings with the organizers, which are more time-consuming. Usually, we communicate directly with Mads and Michael to give them our ideas, how to approach subjects we want to deal with, it's a very open discussion.

There's a mutual trust that they will be able to get our ideas to the tournament organizers to get things done right. We also have a huge Whatsapp group, with a lot of players from a lot of different teams, where information is relayed, where players can directly give ideas or topics they want to talk about.

The trick is that the players have to be active, which is not necessarily the case, and that's one of the problems of the Association. Without real involvement of the players, you can't get, say, 200 or 300 members to vote, because I think 3/4 of them don't even check their e-mail. The majority's thinking is "I play CS, if I see something on Reddit I tweet it and I go back to my life".

Unfortunately, if you want to build something long term, to have an impact with the organizers, you can't just do that. You have to work and be involved, because otherwise you're not taken seriously and the other actors ignore you.