XSE admits it was not ready for tech failures at Pro League Guangzhou

The organizer of the XSE Pro League Guangzhou has answered for a difficult opening week. In a statement reported by HLTV on Monday, July 6, 2026, XSE said it had not been adequately prepared for the technical issues of the first day of its US$1,000,000 Counter-Strike 2 event, confirmed that a power outage caused the delay on the second day, and said it had dismissed what it called the lead admin responsible. Players had reported malicious software on tournament computers during the group stage.

XSE also listed what it had done since. According to HLTV, the organizer wiped and reinstalled the affected systems and replaced a number of the PCs in the training rooms, where teams warm up before their matches. The group stage is now over, and the eight-team playoffs begin on Thursday, July 9.

HLTV reports of June 29, July 5 and July 6, 2026.

Two delayed days and a statement

The trouble began on the very first day. HLTV's report of July 1 described lengthy technical problems that stretched out the opening round of the Swiss bracket, all of it played as single maps, and noted that the first round ended after 3 AM local time. The second day brought further delays, and XSE has now confirmed reports that a power outage was the cause.

Other problems surfaced as the group stage went on. HLTV notes that players raised several issues, among them reports of malicious software found on tournament PCs. XSE's statement also addressed the hacking of a player's Steam account, the account that holds a player's games and items on Valve's platform.

The statement is the organizer's own account of what went wrong. HLTV quotes two of its phrases and paraphrases the rest: XSE admitted it was not adequately prepared for the day-one issues, acknowledged the further problems raised by players, and said it had taken steps to address or resolve them.

What XSE says it changed

The measures XSE describes fall into three groups: the staff, the machines and the rooms where teams practice. The table sets out each point of the statement as HLTV reports it.

An admin, short for administrator, is the tournament official who runs the matches: setting up the servers, checking the computers and the settings, handling pauses and technical problems. At a LAN event, every team plays on site, in the same venue, rather than online from its own base.

Wiping a system means erasing its storage completely, and reinstalling it means putting the operating system and the game back from scratch. Nothing that was installed on the machine before is left on it afterwards. XSE has not said how many systems were affected or how many training-room PCs it replaced.

The event behind the statement

The XSE Pro League Guangzhou 2026 is a LAN event in Guangzhou, China. HLTV's preview of June 29 gives its prize pool as US$1,000,000, with US$200,000 for the winner and US$80,000 for the runner-up. Sixteen teams took part, and the preview lists their places in HLTV's ranking, among them 9z in eighth place, BETBOOM in tenth and Nemesis in 50th. Three teams that had accepted invitations withdrew before the event, according to the preview: MOUZ, ranked ninth, Legacy, 12th, and M80, 24th.

The group stage used a full Swiss format, the one played at Majors before the IEM Cologne Major, as HLTV put it. In a Swiss stage, teams with the same record meet each other, so a team plays opponents at its own level as the stage goes on. The early rounds were best-of-one, a single map, and the progression and elimination matches, those that send a team through or out, best-of-three. Eight teams reach the playoffs, which end with a best-of-five grand final.

The map pool added a new element. HLTV noted on day one that the event was the first Big Event, in the site's own classification, to feature Cache in the map pool since the map was re-added to the game. The map saw no action on the first day, the same report said, and it was played in the last round of the group stage, when FaZe took the deciding map against EYEBALLERS there.

How the group stage ended

On the sporting side, the first day had its own surprises. HLTV's day-one report lists eight single-map results: TYLOO beat FaZe 13-8 on Anubis, 3DMAX edged Ninjas in Pyjamas 16-14 in overtime, EYEBALLERS beat 9z 13-10, Nemesis beat Luminosity 13-10, PARIVISION beat Alliance 13-4, BETBOOM beat SINNERS 13-4, BIG edged Lynn Vision 16-14 and B8 beat MIBR 16-13. FaZe dropped into the 0-1 pool, the group of teams with one loss.

The second day brought more of the same off the server and a clearer table on it. HLTV's report of July 2 described further delays and technical issues, and noted that BETBOOM players had said on social media that they had found malicious software on their PCs. On the server, TYLOO beat PARIVISION 13-5, Nemesis beat B8 13-10, EYEBALLERS beat 3DMAX 13-5 and BETBOOM edged BIG 13-11, so that four teams, TYLOO, Nemesis, EYEBALLERS and BETBOOM, came out of two rounds unbeaten. Alliance beat Ninjas in Pyjamas 13-3 on Ancient, MIBR beat FaZe 13-6 on the same map, Lynn Vision beat Luminosity 13-8 and 9z beat SINNERS 13-5.

That left FaZe and Ninjas in Pyjamas at 0-2, the two teams HLTV described that evening as on the brink of early elimination. At the other end, TYLOO were in the 2-0 pool, and HLTV wrote that Nemesis and EYEBALLERS were each one win away from the playoffs.

The last day of the stage, July 5, decided the final places among the teams with two wins and two losses. HLTV reported that FaZe clinched the last playoff place by beating EYEBALLERS 2-1. They lost Ancient in double overtime after letting an 18-15 lead slip, won Mirage in overtime after coming back from 4-11 down, and took the deciding map, Cache. In the same round, 9z beat MIBR 2-0, winning Nuke 13-10 and then Mirage in overtime after letting a 9-3 lead go, and BIG beat B8 2-0. BIG came from behind on Inferno, winning two late rounds to force overtime and taking it, then let a 12-1 lead slip on Ancient before closing the map out in round 24. MIBR, B8 and EYEBALLERS were eliminated, EYEBALLERS after a 2-0 start, having lost to TYLOO, Nemesis and FaZe.

Two of the eight were ranked outside the top 30 in HLTV's preview: Alliance, 32nd, and Nemesis, 50th. One of them is certain to reach the semifinals, since they meet in the second quarterfinal. FaZe reach the playoffs after losing their first two matches of the group stage. HLTV named JBOEN as their best player of the group stage, with a 1.35 rating over nine maps, while Twistzz and frozen led the Cache decider against EYEBALLERS with ratings of 2.13 and 2.11.

A new stage, a new venue

The playoffs move to a different building. HLTV's preview says that from the quarterfinals onward, matches are held at the South China Agricultural University Gymnasium in front of a small crowd. The playoffs start on Thursday, July 9, run through Saturday, and finish with the grand final on Sunday, July 12, as the best-of-five that closes the event. The measures in the organizer's statement are the ones it listed for the group stage: the dismissal of the lead admin responsible, wiped and reinstalled systems, and replaced machines in the training rooms.

What the players and teams face

For the teams still in the event, the measure that touches them most directly concerns the warm-up rooms. Training rooms are where teams play practice rounds, run their routines and test their settings before going on stage, and XSE's statement singles out those rooms as the place where it replaced PCs.

The eight teams that went home after the group stage, among them 3DMAX, Ninjas in Pyjamas, Luminosity, MIBR, B8 and EYEBALLERS, played their whole event under the conditions the statement describes, from the opening round that ran past 3 AM to the delayed second day.

The first matches under the new arrangements are the two quarterfinals of Thursday, July 9: TYLOO against 9z in the morning slot and Alliance against Nemesis in the afternoon. The winner on Sunday, July 12, takes the US$200,000 first prize.

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