A few days ago ShackES broke a story (and Shack story here) that CPL announced that a decision was made to make changes to the CPL version of Counter-Strike in cooperation with Valve and Intel. There was an intense amount of backlash about the changes, which were to rename the teams to Offensive and Defensive as well as changing the "bomb" to a "communications device". Well after deliberating some more CPL has decided to change one thing back. Here's part of the PR we got from CPL:

... the CPL has concluded that the version of Counter-Strike (CS) that will be used at the World Championship tournament will in fact have an explosive device, with the exact same physics, as gamers from all over the world have been using for their local and online competitions.

Keep in mind the references to Offensive and Defensive teams will remain. It all seems pretty clear to me... As everyone knows the videogame market has been under quite a bit of scrutiny by the press for a while now and getting blamed for all kinds of things that many of us dont feel is deserved. Now you take Intel, a multi-billion dollar company who is sponsoring this event. Now consider the recent terrorist events from last month. Ponder that.

Now... Intel sponsors this event as obviously a PR move. You think Intel wants press that has been historically critical of gaming and violence showing up at an event that has their name all over it where in the finals people are cheering for and glorifying a victory of possibly the "terrorist team"? It's a PR nightmare, and a simple change to the text of the game between rounds is all that is needed to avoid that.

This is not about protecting the sensitivities of gamers. Everyone competing is obviously fine with the game as it is or they wouldnt be playing. This is about protecting the video game industry from the mainstream press vultures who are looking for a hot terrorism related story. That is just about the last thing the gaming industry needs right now.

I dont applaud the decision because it does suck having to change the game, but I can completely understand why the difficult decision was made. I would be almost certain that Intel was a very very big factor in all of this.