The Ukrainian Oleksandr “s1mple” Kostyliev (24) is considered the best player in Counter-Strike: Global Offensive in the world. He has now offered Valve to make the shooter “better for everyone”: Not just for professionals like him, but also for casual players. He only asks for a few million US dollars and player numbers would rise. In fact, CS:GO is already the largest game on Steam.
Who is s1mple?
- The 24-year-old Ukrainian is considered by many to be the best player in CS:GO in the world: he was voted the best player by the HLTV site in 2018 and 2021. In 2019 and 2020, he came in second place.
- s1mple has been playing for 6 years for Natus Vincere, a successful team, made up of Russians and Ukrainians. He is the AWP player there. s1mple has earned 1.65 million US dollars in prize money across 136 tournaments, nearly 95% of that prize money as a member of NaVi.
- In addition to his e-sports skills, he also streams occasionally on Twitch, where he struggles not to get banned from the service because he uses coarse language and has a term in his vocabulary with which he refers to friends, for which he has been banned multiple times by Twitch. He cannot comprehend these bans, as it is all meant to be friendly – Twitch just doesn’t understand him.
This is his announcement: On August 9, s1mple wrote (via twitter):
Hey CS:GO, just give me a few million and I will make your game better, not just for professionals, but also for people who only log in occasionally and want to enjoy the game. I’m not joking, at least your numbers will rise.
s1mple
He also criticized the developers for not being able to fix the brightness bug in CS:GO.
CS:GO is the largest game on Steam but rarely receives updates
What is special about his statement? CS:GO is not just any game, but for many years it has been the largest game on Steam overall.
The player numbers have been fluctuating between 500,000 and 600,000 players, who are online on average. This makes the game even larger than DOTA 2, the other long-time favorite on Steam.
Since PUBG lost popularity some time ago, CS:GO has dominated the Steam charts, even though the game was released back in August 2012.
How could he make the game better? s1mple does not reveal that. The information will probably only come when the dollars are pouring into his account.
Yet, despite CS:GO being such a hit, the game is repeatedly criticized for not being changed very often.
Currently, it’s being criticized that the pool of maps has remained unchanged for a long time. Especially the map “Mirage” is under fire, as it is the only one in the official map pool that has not received a rework. Some professionals are therefore calling for the map to be replaced.
s1mple, however, is on the side of the developers and says that the map should remain in the game. People calling for its removal have no idea about Counter-Strike. Because it is the best map to outsmart opponents with superior gameplay.
Players complain about bugs in CS:GO that have been annoying for a long time
s1mple apparently has other plans to improve CS:GO. In the comments, numerous bugs regarding sound or hit registration are listed, which have allegedly plagued CS:GO for years.
It’s certainly an interesting experiment what would happen if someone like s1mple were given command over CS:GO.
A few months ago, s1mple lost one of his most important colleagues at Natus Vincere:
