"Workplace" and "rectum" seem unrelated, except for their similar pronunciation.
But after working in the corporate world for a while, you'll discover they not only sound similar but are equally lax—when unexpected situations arise, they can't hold anything together, merely spilling out their inner rot, showing you what it means that "the world is one giant amateur show."
Today, we're discussing the amateurish organizers of XPL Guangzhou 2026.
Under the mysterious management of the organizers, a grand CS2 international tournament faced constant issues from day one, committing every mistake possible in esports, including "CS2 tournament computers didn't have CS2 installed" and "foreign players got their accounts hacked after logging into tournament computers," rivaling the infamous India Sky Cup.
Seeing such amateurish organization, people who don't closely follow CS might assume this was just a small tournament. But the opposite is true—XPL Guangzhou 2026, fully named "XPL 2026 Guangzhou International Professional Invitational," is a Valve-certified T1-level CS2 international tournament affecting world rankings and Major points, featuring 16 global professional teams competing for a purported total prize pool of $1 million.
XPL Guangzhou 2026 was also the first international T1 tournament hosted by a local Chinese third-party organizer. Although few strong teams participated, it was still nominally a T1 event, with many Chinese teams competing, naturally drawing attention from players worldwide, especially domestic ones. Many Chinese spectators paid top dollar for tickets to support the local tournament organizer.
Unexpectedly, XPL Guangzhou 2026 served CS players a massive disaster. Furthermore, being an international tournament, its shameful state was broadcast live to CS players worldwide, gaining fame in the global village. The CNCS tournaments, which had好不容易 built up their international reputation through events like the Shanghai Major, instantly regressed to a level comparable only to India's.
For foreign teams coming to China for a tournament, they directly experience the Chinese classic "Journey to the East"—to win the championship and lift the trophy, they must endure eighty-one tribulations along the way before finally achieving success.
On July 1st, the opening match of the first day was FaZe vs. TYLOO at 3 PM—one is a popular long-standing foreign team, and the other is the top domestic team with home-field advantage. Scheduling this highly anticipated match between domestic and international fans as the opener shows that the organizers really understand how to drive traffic.
However, this highly anticipated match was repeatedly delayed, only starting near 5 PM. Actually, delays in esports tournaments are understandable; in other major events, matches postponed due to technical debugging or equipment checks have become commonplace.
But what does it mean that foreign players couldn't log in to the Perfect World platform? Generally, account login is a basic pre-match preparation issue and should never be handled at the venue. It's like a student arriving at the college entrance exam only to realize the teacher forgot to prepare their admission ticket.
As for another reason, spectators might rack their brains unable to guess—what does it mean that the computers for the CS2 match didn't have CS2 downloaded? Players opened their computers to warm up, only to find they had to download the game themselves? This is like the teacher forgetting not only the students' admission tickets but also bringing the exam papers. If the organizers had just hauled a computer from an internet cafe, this situation wouldn't have occurred.
After installing the game on-site, you might think the match could begin, but there was a third hurdle at the venue—
What do you mean the players' tables were different, and frozen's table was even crooked? Moreover, after frozen reported the table issue, it took the organizers over an hour to replace it? Once the table was fixed, frozen was immediately rushed to warm up and start the match, with no regard for whether he could get into the zone within the limited time?
Honestly, forget about hauling computers from internet cafes; just hold the matches at the internet cafe itself, since at least the equipment there is standardized... Wait! What do you mean it's a T1-level international tournament, but the secondary stage is literally held in an internet cafe? And there's no viewing area for the secondary stage, so ticket holders have to watch the livestream on their phones?
At this point, the tournament finally got on track, beginning the first match of day one. Honestly, although there were many issues before the match started, troubles during the gameplay were equally numerous, continuing to add to XPL's prize pool of embarrassment.
For example, player Magnojez's account was hacked simply because he logged in on the tournament computer. While hacking bots were spamming harassment emails, Magnojez could only post on social media like an incompetent husband, warning others that his account had been compromised and that the "blonde guy" currently using it was not him.
On the second day, the team conducted a technical inspection of the computer used by Magnojez and found various trojans, scripts... and World of Warcraft? Could this truly be a gold-farming computer scavenged from a shady internet cafe?
Another example: FaZe's coach's headset failed to pick up audio during the match, preventing him from communicating with his team or calling for a technical pause, leaving him no choice but to shout angrily at XPL staff.
Player neityu's computer crashed mid-match, and staff arrived late. Their repair skills were worse than those at the local computer mall, requiring four RAM replacements and one graphics card swap to fix.
After playing the first day's matches, which were delayed until early morning, the players still couldn't return to their hotels to rest; they had to attend the post-match autograph session.
During the pre-event ticket sales phase, the organizers promised that top-tier expensive tickets would include access to post-match player autograph sessions. Therefore, many fans willing to pay hefty sums for autographs bought these tickets. However, close to the start date and after the full refund period had expired, the organizers suddenly announced that the original guarantee of autographs from all players of one chosen team had changed to a limited, first-come-first-served basis. Essentially, some high-ticket buyers merely purchased eligibility to attend an elbowing contest. Incidentally, the autograph session on the second day was canceled entirely, leaving attendees who came specifically for signatures empty-handed.
Squeezed onto folding chairs, enduring frequent match pauses, and spending real money without getting autographs... the live audience finally reached their breaking point, collectively shouting "Refund!" What made it even more amusing was that the official broadcast stream made no emergency adjustments to the on-site audio, boldly broadcasting the audience's unified chants to everyone.
While offline viewers were furious, online viewers weren't faring much better.
The broadcast director seemed stuck at a Silver rank, failing to provide key shots like kills or post-match replays; the viewer UI was chaotic, with cloned player avatars, frequent frame drops and lag, and even audible WeChat call ringtones.
On the second day of the tournament, a transformer malfunctioned on-site, causing a power outage that halted the entire event. I thought this was an esports competition, but did the terrorists plant real explosives? Previously, overseas audiences only questioned China's tournament organization standards; now they can directly question its infrastructure level. The modern image of China successfully projected on TikTok has been rolled back to the previous version.
The issues mentioned in this article are only a small fraction of those at XPL Guangzhou 2026. The remaining unmentioned problems are too numerous to list here.
In 2024, when the "India Sky Cup" emerged, XPL tournament manager Wang Guyue took the opportunity to heavily mock them, joking about the India Sky Cup's social media tag "Save India CS watch SkypeEsports."
He probably didn't expect that his earlier mockery, calling the "India Sky Cup a parallel universe version of XPL," would become a boomerang across time and space, hitting him hard on the head—"Trojans in Guangzhou XPL computers" and "Snakes in India Sky Cup toilets" are now known as the twin embarrassments of CS tournaments, nailed together on the pillar of shame.
Fortunately, XPL Guangzhou 2026 is just an isolated case in domestic CS tournaments. After years of vigorous development, CNCS tournaments have accumulated significant experience in event organization. Both the annual CAC (CS Asia Invitational) and the 2024 Shanghai Major have gained considerable love and recognition from players domestically and internationally.
It can only be said that tournaments like XPL, where phrases like "T1 tournament," "game not downloaded," and "account hacked" appear in the same paragraph, although not as extreme as the "India Sky Cup," are still quite niche. In contrast, domestic audiences who previously considered the Shanghai Major and past CACs subpar suddenly elevated them to professional top-tier status, almost wanting to compose a song praising Perfect World, embodying the saying "competitors are benefactors."
And now, XPL Guangzhou 2026 has just begun—feel free to keep watching to see if any new comedic moments emerge on the battlefield.