The largest German Twitch streamer for Counter-Strike has founded his own team, but shortly before the big goal it’s all over.
Who is it about? The German Twitch streamer Mark Zimmermann aka “ohnePixel” is a well-known face in the Counter-Strike community. He regularly streams in English to over 20,000 viewers, making him one of the biggest streamers of Valve’s tactical shooter.
ohnePixel is not known for outstanding gameplay, although he actively plays Counter-Strike a lot in his streams. The streamer is primarily known as a skin collector and expert. For example, in one stream he opened cases for almost €120,000.
In August 2024, ohnePixel announced that the streamer was founding his own team in Counter-Strike 2 with which he would like to take part in the “Perfect World Shanghai Major 2024”. This is an international esports tournament in CS2 in which the 24 best teams in the world compete. The winner will receive $500,000 in prize money.
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Failed in qualification
How did it go for the team? Rather bad. In order to take part in the Shanghai Major, the team must successfully qualify for the major tournament. There is a kind of regional qualification tournament in which the individual teams have to prove themselves. This is where it is determined which teams from a region will compete in the major.
The ohnePixel team played the qualification in the Middle East and met, among others, the teams Al-Ittihad, Bravado Gaming and NOM Esports with players from Algeria, South Africa and Israel. The streamer’s team was able to prevail here and ultimately took first place.
However, the team then had to prove itself in the Asia-Pacific “Regional Major Ranking”. There they were able to win the first game with a comeback, but then suffered a 2-1 defeat in the second game against the team “The MongolZ”, who thus qualified for the major.
The streamer’s team still had a chance to qualify, but had to win the following 2 games to do so. But in the very next game there was another defeat and the dream was over. Qualification was no longer possible from then on, and shortly afterwards 3 players announced that they would be leaving the failed team.
Controversy overshadows the team’s successes
How was the streamer’s experiment viewed? Many viewers and fans of ohnePixel followed the qualifying matches with excitement and, if necessary, kept their fingers crossed for their favorite streamer.
Nevertheless, there was also a lot of criticism from the community for the path that ohnePixel took with his team: They tried to gain participation in the major through the Asia-Pacific (APAC) qualification – even though the team was initially from 3, and later even from 4 Europeans existed.
Some of the community didn’t like this because if it’s successful, players and teams that actually come from the region will have a place taken away from them to take part in the major. ohnePixel probably didn’t violate the rules, but there was still criticism for it.
Asia-Pacific is viewed as a comparatively weak, less contested region in Counter-Strike. In Europe, the ohnePixel team could have met NaVi, G2, Faze, Astalis, Team Vitality or Heroic. For example, the “IEM Rio 2024” tournament held in October was also decided between European teams in the final. However, one of the winners didn’t feel like celebrating: Professional wins important tournament in CS2, but instead of celebrating, he leaves the stage – That’s why