Alexandre “Gaules” Borba is fully feeding off the hype for Counter-Strike 2, the successor to the wildly popular Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. The fan-favorite Brazilian streamer has officially notched four million followers on his Twitch account, a historic number even by his standards.
Gaules has been one of the many streamers who has benefitted from the rise of “costreaming” among the publishers of esports games. Put simply, publishers and third-party organizers like ESL or Riot Games will grant certain streamers rights to have watch parties for their tournaments, provided that the co-streaming analytics also count the same as the official broadcast.
Given Gaules’s ties to the professional Brazilian scene, his popularity is easy to understand. ESL’s Counter-Strike Rio Major was practically the Gaules show, as the streamer was co-streaming inside the stadium and was given opportunities to speak over in-stadium official channels to fans.
This year, Gaules’s stream has been viewed for 89.3 million hours, according to statistics pulled from SullyGnome. He peaked at a staggering 250,000 plus concurrent viewers.
Despite the hype around CS2, it’s clear the game still needs more time in the oven before it meets the standards of the franchise. North American legend Jonathan “EliGE” Jablonowski pointed out quite a few issues with the game at launch. Players with AMD graphics cards have had tough sledding with in-game stutters. For casual players, all of their Steam achievements from CS:GO are gone, and multiple professional players have said that the game simply isn’t ready for competitive play.
While the issues persist, the game chugs on, and there’s no doubt that eventually the game will rival if not surpass CS:GO. Global Offensive had massive issues at launch that pale in comparison to the issues CS2 faces: it’s just going to take a bit more time to be as complete as the previous iteration in the franchise.
