The crowd in the IEM Rio Major Challengers Stage has made quite a name for itself during the first days of the $1.25 million CS:GO event. The fans have supported the home teams nonstop and come up with creative chants, creating a show for everyone who is following the action.
In addition to the chants, however, the crowd has also sparked controversy at the IEM Rio Major. There have been a few episodes in which fans called out the positions of players facing Brazilian teams, for example. That motivated ESL to remove the mini-map and X-ray feature in the arena to prevent this issue, only to revert the changes after community backlash.
Related: ESL quickly caves on IEM Rio Major changes after Gaules, CS:GO community outcry
With all that said, there’s no one better than the players to explain the exact effect the Brazilian crowd is having on games. Vinicius “VINI” Figueiredo, a rifler of the most popular team at the IEM Rio Major—Imperial—revealed a situation in which his side played around the crowd’s noise.
“What we know that we can do is sometimes you just hold an angle and people start screaming, or when you get a lurker and the guy is gonna be at your site,” VINI said in an interview with Dust2.us. “I think the only thing that we could get in these matches, on Inferno, everyone starts screaming during the B retake and we just told FalleN ‘Hold our back for like five seconds’ and it paid off. I think the only thing we managed to do with the crowd was like that.”
The Imperial player doesn’t think the tournament organizers should stop what the crowd is doing, though. VINI said there are “a lot of gimmicks that you can do with the crowd” but that happens everywhere, including in other prestigious CS:GO events like IEM Katowice and IEM Cologne. The crowd in Brazil just happens to be “really loud,” according to VINI.
It’s unclear at the moment if ESL will remove features like X-ray and mini-map in the arena, especially in matches involving Brazilian teams. The most popular player in Brazil, Gabriel “FalleN” Toledo, urged the fans to not cheat and so did the streamer Alexandre “Gaules” Borba, who is the arena commentator.
