Statistics are crucial in esports but at the recent ESL Pro League finals for CS:GO, one of the more bizarre stats tracked gives us a unique insight into the dire fate of defenceless poultry livestock.
In Valve’s hit FPS Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, there are tournaments ongoing all the time, with the biggest names in esports facing off to win hundreds of thousands of dollars almost every week.
While some stats, such as a player’s KDR or average damage per round, can indicate who the best performing players are, there’s one factor that many people don’t think about during a match: the chickens.
Chickens have been the one constant in CSGO for as long as we can remember: while pro players have come and gone, the chickens can be found at every tournament, making their presence known.
But new stats from Scope.GG show an alarming rate of murdered chickens at the ESL Pro League finals, which saw mousesports beat Fnatic in a 3-0 grand final win.
In a tweet posted on December 10, Scope said: “279 chickens were killed at EPL S10 Finals, averaging 0.73 chicken kills per round ? @Krimz was the cruelest player: he killed 26 chickens (0.20/round).”
279 chickens were killed at EPL S10 Finals, averaging 0.73 chicken kills per round ?@Krimz was the most cruel player: he killed 26 chickens (0.20/round).
But @karriganCSGO impressed us the most — he killed a chicken with a smoke grenade ?
The hate is real.#stats_scopegg pic.twitter.com/sbxizdL2d1
— SCOPE.GG (@scope_gg) December 10, 2019
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Most impressive is Karrigan’s unique chicken kill, taking one down with just a smoke grenade in a truly impressive display of accuracy and sheer cold-bloodedness.
This isn’t a statistic regularly tracked, so it’s hard to compare this to other tournaments, but 0.73 chicken deaths per round across the entire tournament definitely seems like a lot. It must be said, though, that Sharks Esports were the only team not to kill a chicken at all.
How many of these kills were intentional is not accounted for – though, given the stakes at hand, not many will likely have been focusing on chickens instead of opposing players.
It is integral that we continue to follow how the chickens are suffering at these large-scale events.
Maybe there was a lot more bloodshed than usual at the ESL Pro League Season 10 finals, but it could be that there are many more suffering at the hands of pro players every weekend that we haven’t accounted for.