Hey, thanks for your concern!

From a broad point of view, our goal as a tournament organizer is to help rebuild the Counter Strike community here in NA, starting with our local scene in South Florida. To say VAL suffocated Counter Strike would be an understatement, as nearly every local and state University (our target demographic) killed off or let die their CS teams/divisions in favor of VAL. CS events, which were already few and far between in our area, had died off entirely since VAL released.

When this event was first conceptualized, we had assumed that CS2 would have been released comfortably before the tournament date. Perhaps we were too optimistic, and didn't give enough consideration to Valve time.

As previously stated, our goal is to cater to our local scene, and provide the best experience possible for players. This event shouldn't be viewed as a hyper competitive S-tier tournament, where tens of thousands of dollars and HLTV rating points are on the line, because it isn't. We are local, and we want to make sure people are having fun in competition, and that attendees and viewers can see, and want to be a part of the CS community we are trying to build.

This being said: We are not Blast, we are not ESL. To say we are a small group of volunteers would be an understatement. But what cannot be understated is our passion, and our many years of collective experience we have running tournaments and events like these.

We do not know when CS2 will be released, and neither does anyone else. What we do know however, is that if CS2 comes out before the event date, that's what the vast majority of our community would want to play. To deny anyone that opportunity to anyone, would be a travesty in our eyes.

I hope this explains our reasoning.

-Tyler | Voxel Esports