Professional CSGO player Tarik ‘tarik’ Çelik hosted a watch party to watch the first CSGO event of 2022, BLAST Premier Spring Groups. During his stream, he was avidly watching the games of his former team Evil Geniuses as well as other NA CSGO teams in the tournament, i.e. Team Liquid and Complexity.
Team Liquid’s IGL, Nick ‘nitr0’ Cannella returned to CSGO after spending a year and a half in Valorant with 100Thieves. He had left CS in 2020 and was an integral part of 100 Thieves’ early success in Valorant. His return was inspired by watching the CSGO Major – PGL Stockholm, combined with some problems in the 100 Thieves Valorant roster, as he said himself on Reddit.
In January 2022, he played his first official game of CSGO and found it difficult to hit his stride.
“nitr0 was farming these Motherf*****s in Valorant, now he comes over to CS, and he’s having a hard time. At that point, I’d consider going back if I were him. Motherf**kers in Valorant weren’t shooting back,” Tarik said.
This was in a clear criticism of the level of difference in CSGO and Valorant, both the games being First-person shooters.
Nitr0 has been struggling in CSGO ever since his return and during BLAST Premier Spring Groups he had a rating of 0.80, which is well below par, as well as a 0.65 K/D ratio.
Tarik himself has been Streaming Valorant non-stop on his Twitch Channel, and his YouTube channel to feature only Valorant content lately, with the last CSGO video being from November 2021.
Back in July 2021, he wasn’t afraid to call CSGO harder than Valorant on Twitter, whether he was just farming impressions or actually meant what he said, only he knows.
Recently he also baited CSGO players by saying “bro lowkey cs is kinda boring now valo has effects n shit” ensuring balanced appreciation and criticism.
IS VALORANT HARDER THAN CSGO?
The two first-person shooters have always been compared, mainly because of the similarities in the two games.
But Valorant, since its release, has gone in a different direction than it’s counterpart. Valorant introduces new agents, with their own unique abilities while in CSGO everyone has the same character and player model.
The utilities in Valorant are also way different than CSGO, as CSGO relies on the simplistic approach of Smokes, Molotovs, Flashbangs and HE Grenades while Valorant has different utilities altogether such as Sova’s dart and Killjoy etc.
While it is true that ex CSGO pros that couldn’t find their place in the upper echelons of CSGO have moved to Valorant and are at the top tier there.
The likes of Scream, TenZ, Shazam, FNS, swag etc. have found their calling in CSGO. nitr0, autimatic, Nivera and perhaps Jampii were the only tier 1 pros to have moved to Valorant during the height of their careers.