CS:GO Rio Major Canceled Due to COVID-19, Obviously

I was pretty sure that COVID-19 had canceled every major gaming event and meetup that was supposed to happen this year, but apparently there was a holdout: CS:GO Rio Major. Valve and ESL had, shockingly, been planning to go forward with this enormous esport event until very recently, when they finally recanted and said, shockingly, that it might not be possible to be safe with thousands of people contained in a small space.

"Together with Valve we had to make the tough but safe decision to cancel the ESL One Rio Major 2020 due to the ongoing disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. We worked through several alternative options down to the last hour to make the Major a reality, but ultimately have to face the fact that the global situation currently does not allow for a Major to take place. While Valve is currently not able to say when and how Majors will return, as soon as they do we'll work to bring the Major to Rio. New dates will be announced once a return for an in-arena Major is safe for everyone involved. All purchased tickets remain fully valid or can be refunded upon request."

Yeah, no duh. More interestingly, however, Valve decided to use the opportunity to address the recent controversy surrounding those coaches we heard about a little while back, who were using a spectator bug to cheat.

Any teams that were disqualified for exploiting this bug during an RMR event will have their RMR points reset.

As for taking action against individual coaches, we’re going to wait until we get a complete picture of the extent of the bug abuse and the punishments handed down by third parties. Regardless of those penalties, mid-match coaching will always be a tempting opportunity for some teams to violate the integrity of the match. So we may also consider limitations to coaching.

An unsurprising result, but it's still a bit of a bummer that every coach must suffer for the actions of a few bad apples. Such is the way it goes, I suppose.