Since the release of R6:Siege, ESL became the biggest tournament platform for it. Last weekend, teams were able to participate in GO4R6 cup #100 for EU region. We will also take a look at all previous 99 cups!

First european GO4 cup was held in the year 2016, 7th of February to be precise where we saw a great number of over 200 teams. The cup was played among 184 checked in teams and the first GO4 victory went to team “I don’t know”. The winning line up was: Elemzje / Enemy_N1 / Panix / Revan_N2 / Ricki. 2nd placed team was PENTA Sports with lineup: A1GA / Pengu / S4i / Ovie / rendier.

Go4 cups are open tournaments on ESL platform which serve as proving grounds for all players and teams who want to play games more competitively. Best teams and players get rewarded! ESL has been organizing GO4 cups for 15 years for many different games and many of professional esport players started with GO4 cups.

GO4 nagrade

100 teams checked in for GO4 Cup #100. Final match was between team ProYo still asleep and Valfard. ProYo still asleep core was made from XBOXMASTERRACE players while Valfards’ core consisted of snooken, Renuilz and Secretly – ex-snooken knows players. ProYo still asleep won Club House and Border with 5-2 results in this lineup: ASTRO / M4DMAN /Mac / ProYo / Ramzey

GO4 EU #100

The beginning

Great number of multiplayer first person shooters orient themselves towards competetive, esports scene where individuals can show their skills, get rewarded for it or even maybe become pro. R6:Siege also tends to go that way and using ESL platform was a great way to do that. GO4 cups were created for Rainbow6 community and they are available in NA, LATAM, EU and APAC regions on 3 platforms: PC, PS4 and Xbox One.

First Rainbow Six: Siege GO4 cup attracted a lot of teams and is still holding a record for EU PC – 233 signed up teams / 184 checked in. Because of a huge number of teams, the tournament was played throughout two days and the finals saw players like Pengu, Panix and Elemzje that are still actively playing the game. Team “I don’t know” showed their strenght in next two cups, while PENTA got their first title on cup #4. After the initial 5 GO4 cups, the number of teams drastically fell down and teams were losing interest for GO4 cups. The state of the game was to be blamed as with operation Skull Rain (summer of 2016.) the playerbase was at its lowest level. Netcode, rubberbanding, improper hitboxes and the large numbers of cheaters scared away players. Only the most stubborn players remained loyal to Rainbow6 and during Skull Rain we saw team EURONICS taking 3 GO4 cups in a row. Team was made of Pannari, Renuilz, Secretly, Snooken and elTunisiano.

Year two

Year two of Rainbow Six: Siege started with Operation Velvet Shell where Mira was introduced – a meta changing operator. The game itself went through a lot of improvements and slowly the interest of players started to grow. After almost a year, the GO4 cup finally attracted more than 100 teams for a single cup. It was GO4R6 cup #53 where Team Vitality took the victory with a well known lineup Elemzje/Enemy/Panix/Revan (all players from team “I don’t know) with addition of risze. As the number of teams increased during Velvet Shell, we saw more diverse teams taking GO4 cups with players from all over Europe. According to SteamCharts, Velvel Shell caused a ~50% gain of Steam players increasing their average number from 20.000 to 30.000 while the number of players who play exclusively on uPlay platform is unknown.

Next operation was the famous Operation Health. Ubisoft went with a risky decision to delay an entire season and its content for a few months so they can switch their focus on game improvement. During Operation Health the number of teams didn’t change much, it was always around 70-80 teams on GO4 cups. During the operation, beGeniusESC lineup started taking over GO4 cups. Its lineup consisted of Masdemort, Shaiiko, TPEX, ironiqzs and sNKy. Their playstyle was rewarded and they reached Pro League but didn’t last long because of the Shaiiko incident. Operation Health came to an end in September and the results were satisfying. Improvements were well received by community and Operation Blood Orchid went live with 3 new operators – Ying, Lesion and Ela who immediately became one of the top defender picks. During Blood Orchid, most of the GO4 cup winners were mixed teams like Adventure Call, Room Factory Mixerino, Valfard, S1 eSports mix and taktikINSHALLA.

Operation White Noise went live in December and brought two new operatos: Dokkaebi and Vigil. So far, 5 GO4 cups were organized during this operation and there was a decreased number of teams because of R6 Invitational qualifers which consisted of Ladder system and top16 teams playoff phase. Because of its schedule, two GO4 cups were played on Wednesday instead of the usual Sunday cups. The Invitational qualifiers are about to end and rumours about big esport organizations jumping in R6:Siege scene are circling around social media. Evil Geniuses and Rogue signed Vertical Gaming and Continuum lineups last year and names like Faze, Liquid and Ninjas in Pyjamas are rumoured to sign teams after the R6 Invitational. With such big names showing interest towards the R6:Siege scene, we can expect new players who might try to make a team and participate in various open cups like ESL GO4R6. Maybe this year, the EU PC community could break the record of participating teams from GO4 #1. In the meantime, the EU PS4 playerbase is growing even larger as PS4 GO4R6 cups often attract more than 150 teams.

Graph showing signed up and checked in teams in all GO4R6 EU/PC cups

Number of teams by R6 Operation/Seasons

Statistics

Many players went through 100 GO4 EU/PC cups so we took general statistics of those which could be found on ESL sites.

46 teams managed to win GO4 cup, and among them, 186 players were in the winning team. Most wins went to Elemzje, Pannari, Enemy and Panix (13). Pengu is not far behind with 12 wins, Secretly with 11 and Renuilz with 10.

Players with 5 or more GO4 wins

The most successful lineup was “I don’t know” with 12 GO4 victories, although we need to mention that the lineup changed with time. It started with Elemzje/Enemy/Panix/Revan who later became part of Team Vitality. Their spots were filled with meepeY and Lacky who were joined by LeonGids, Renuilz and Secretly. The team managed to reach Invitational playoffs. Next is  EURONICS with 9 wins – Pannari/Renuilz/Secretly/snooken core.

Teams that won 2 or more GO4 cups

Most GO4 victories went to “EU” teams – teams consisting of players from different countries. We can also include teams like “Adventure Call” and “FriendsOfFabian” here as they have Belgium and Uzbeksitan named as their countries on ESL pages.

GO4 wins by countries

You can check out entire list on THIS LINK.

ESL GO4 cups are a great opportunity for new teams and players to show their skill. There are many more tournaments besides GO4 like regional or national tournaments (Benelux, Germany, France…).

All stats were taken directly from ESL website.