Thorin commented on the ban on discriminatory remarks in ESL’s CS2 tournament rules

Analyst Duncan “Thorin” Shields spoke out on his personal page on social network X about a new rule in ESL tournaments that will allow organizers to listen in on players’ communications during matches and penalize them for using offensive language.
Players from Eastern Europe have been using words in their communications for decades that people consider offensive. It’s funny that organizers have suddenly started to care about this.
Yesterday, ESL published a major overhaul of the rules for the ESL Pro Tour competitive ecosystem ahead of the start of the second season of 2026. In one of the rules, the tournament organizer (TO) regulated player behavior on internal communication channels.
Photo by Igor Bezborodov, StarLadder.


