May 2025 competitive digest

One club finished May in front of both MOBA and CS by opposite methods, a points circuit arrived in CS and not in MOBA, and two thirds of the CS transfer market moved inside the eleven days that finally had something to qualify for.

The month across ESMO

May pulled the two games in opposite directions, and that split is the story.

MOBA ran a calendar with no memory. Thirty one evening cups paid $76,700 each, with $50,000 reserved for an unbeaten run and $15,000 for second, while an hourly tier underneath paid $5,000 a time into fields of four to nine rosters. The reward ledger recorded cash and nothing else: no competition points were claimed all month, no qualification place was handed out, and no event on the schedule carried a residency restriction. Nothing won on 3 May made 30 May any easier. CS looked like the same sport for three weeks, a worldwide daily series posting $153,100 almost every day, and then changed shape on 21 May when its point circuit opened, sorting fifteen point bearing events into each of three circuit regions. Eleven days later, three regional gates ran inside twelve hours at $57,200 apiece. One game finished May with a ladder. The other finished it with a bank statement.

Anastas Palin PH is why this is one article rather than two. It closed the month on $4,026,580, 281 championships, 342 podiums, 397 top four finishes and 1,835 wins against 228 losses from 2,212 appearances, first in its league position, and its two competing sides account for every match and every dollar of that between them. They got there by opposite routes. In MOBA the club banked $1,579,180 and 241 titles from 1,913 games at a win rate a shade under eighty nine percent, taking four of the thirty one evening cups, on 7, 9, 16 and 30 May. In CS it played 299 times and lost four, for 40 championships, 45 podiums and $2,447,400, went sixteen from sixteen in point bearing events, and did not drop a match inside the worldwide daily series at 110-0. Accumulation in one game, conversion in the other, one club doing both at once.

The same caveat follows it through both digests. A large share of those circuit wins came in a region whose biggest edition of the month returned 16 point claims, against 711 claims across the fifteen events in the deepest region. The MOBA haul came mostly from a tier where $5,000 was the ceiling. Neither game says the club was flattered, and a side that goes 110-0 in the one event open to everybody is not being carried. What both say is that it chose where to play, and that nothing in either calendar made the choice expensive.

Washed Team produced the month’s other shape, and produced it twice. Its MOBA side went 299-34 and won twelve evening cups between 4 and 20 May, every one of them 7-0. Its CS side went 50-6 from 82 appearances for $327,600, taking an unranked opener and two daily editions. Club wide that is 349 wins against 40 losses from 418 appearances, 35 championships and $1,135,950, fifth on the month’s money list off roughly a fifth of the games the clubs above it played. Then both halves stopped inside a day of each other. The CS side made its last recorded start on 23 May and was absent when all three gates ran. The MOBA side finished second on three consecutive nights from 21 May and left the final eight evening cups blank. Spotless where it played, missing where the month was decided, in two games at the same time.

The transfer file explains why that timing was not a coincidence. Forty nine of the sixty four flagged moves sit in CS against fifteen in MOBA, and thirty two of those CS deals landed on or after 21 May, which means two thirds of the CS market moved inside the eleven days that had something to qualify for. MOBA, with no gate to prepare for, did its heaviest trading in mid month around the only bracket paying serious money. Clubs bought for the calendar in front of them, and in May only one game handed them a date to buy toward.

Best clubs

My order for May across ESMO: Anastas Palin PH, Washed Team, juster, Pharaohs of Eternity, Solary, HeliTy.

First is the least arguable placement on this list and still not a formality. Anastas Palin PH banked more than three times the prize money of any other club and took 281 championships, but the figure that persuades me is not the size of the pile. It is that two calendars asking for opposite things, one rewarding volume and one rewarding conversion, were answered by one club inside the same thirty one days.

Second, Washed Team, and I hold this placement loosest of all. Nothing in May came near 349 wins against 40 losses on a per game basis, and twelve unbeaten runs through a bracket paying $50,000 is a harder trick than any cash total here. Two things keep it second. The 418 appearance sample is a fraction of what sits above it, and the club left the closing week of both games empty. A month is thirty one days.

Third, juster, on $1,331,160 and 32 championships from 932 appearances, a 593-220 record and a first place league position. Its CS side produced the cleanest piece of scheduling anywhere in May: 141-8 for 23 championships, 34 podiums and $1,181,660, twelve titles from fourteen point bearing starts at 27-0, and one of the three regional gates on the final day. Far fewer trophies than the two clubs below it, aimed much better.

Fourth, Pharaohs of Eternity, which finished $582 ahead of it on cash at $1,331,742 and could hardly have got there more differently: 181 championships, 257 podiums and 1,632 wins against 256 losses from 1,903 appearances. Its MOBA side lost 224 matches across the whole month and still converted nineteen evening entries into a single title, with second place on five separate nights. Being the second strongest team on a given evening was worth a great deal of money and almost no hardware.

Fifth, Solary, on $1,189,530, 60 championships and 1,441-450 from 1,914 appearances. Its MOBA side entered twenty seven of the thirty one evening cups, more than any rival managed, and won nine, six of those from ten entries after 20 May. The honest counterpoint is that the surge began the same week its main obstacle stopped entering.

Sixth, HeliTy, which is here on an argument rather than a ledger. $505,536 and seven championships trails everything above it, but its CS side took five point bearing titles in the only region that was genuinely crowded, including a 46 claim open and titles on 29 and 30 May back to back, going 156-19 across 234 appearances. If a trophy is worth what it costs to win, those were the dearest of the month.

This is a reading, not a result. So here is the argument worth having: does $4,026,580 and 281 championships assembled across all thirty one days in two games settle first place for Anastas Palin PH, or does Washed Team, at 349-40 with a rate nothing else in May approached, hold the better claim on the month once you accept that it simply stopped turning up for the final week of both?

Notable transfers

Sixty four moves were flagged across the month, every one of them priced in USD, and the ones that mattered fall into three arcs.

The largest single fee of May, eDsake67 at $650,000 on 19 May, went into Washed Team on the same night its MOBA side won its eleventh evening cup. Five days later that club sold Nikoff for $100,000, and the date is the hinge of its entire month. The CS side had made its last recorded start the day before. The MOBA side never entered another evening cup. Paying the month’s biggest fee at the peak of a run and going quiet in both games within a week is the oddest line in the ledger, and it reads the same whichever game you read it from.

The club on the other side of an earlier sale did the reverse. organicmouse373 cost juster $120,000 on 13 May, eight days before the CS point circuit existed, and it had already committed $330,000 to beautifulfrog165 in MOBA on 4 May, the third largest fee of the month. Buying in two games before either schedule asked for it looked like very little at the time. It finished as twelve titles from fourteen point bearing CS starts at 27-0, and a regional gate on the last day of May.

Almost everyone else bought late and bought for a date. VIT☼Guardian moved for $100,000 on 22 May, the day after the circuit opened, and nine days later Boom Esport took $25,000 out of the deepest of the three gates on a clean 3-0, while VitalityBee, the club it had bought from, took $3,200 from that same event. SAIYAN paid $150,000 for crazkoala447 on 30 May and finished second at the APAC gate twenty four hours later, its MOBA side having already taken the only 8-0 night that game produced all month, on 26 May. And Anastas Palin PH, which had already won more prize money than any club in either game, was still shopping on the last working day before the gates: whitefroG71 at $350,000 on 30 May, bought from a club whose CS side went 0-8 across its recorded play.

One deal never explains a bracket, and sequence is not cause. But thirty two of the forty nine flagged CS moves landed on or after 21 May, each of the three clubs that took the largest share of a closing gate had bought during the month, and the club with the sharpest per game record in either game spent its last significant action of May selling. In MOBA, where no result fed another, nobody had a deadline to buy toward at all.

Game digests

Both game articles carry the roster level detail this one leaves out, along with the full competition ledgers and the complete transfer file in each game.

MOBA competitive digest covers the thirty one evening cups, the hourly tier running underneath them, the mid month monopoly on the only bracket paying serious money, and the scramble that followed once it ended.

CS competitive digest covers the worldwide daily series, the point circuit that opened on 21 May, the uneven regions it exposed, and the three gates that closed the month.

ESMO Club GOAT debate

Four months of supported record now exist across ESMO, and a club argument has to open with what does not compare. The record covers two games, and neither has ever priced a trophy the way the other does. In April a CS title paid $100,000, a MOBA daily title paid $50,000 and a MOBA hourly title paid $5,000, which is why MOBA produced 741 of that month’s 771 championships and CS produced the other 30. May kept the split and widened it. MOBA ran thirty one evening cups at $76,700 with $50,000 reserved for an unbeaten run, an hourly tier underneath where $5,000 was the ceiling, and a reward ledger recording cash and nothing else, with no competition points claimed all month and no qualification place handed out. CS ran a worldwide daily series posting $153,100 almost every day, then opened a point circuit on 21 May and closed with three regional gates at $57,200 apiece. Competition point standings and rating movement were unavailable in both games across February, March and April. So nothing below is normalized between the games and no composite is built from them. What travels is narrower: the win and loss line, the conversion of entries into titles, and whether a club kept entering at all.

My pick is Anastas Palin PH, and the case is that no other club in this record has finished in front of both games in the same month, by opposite methods, the way it did in May. It closed the month on $4,026,580, 281 championships, 342 podiums, 397 top four finishes and 1,835 wins against 228 losses from 2,212 appearances, first in its league position, with its two competing sides accounting for every match and every dollar between them. In MOBA, Anastas Palin PH banked $1,579,180 and 241 titles from 1,913 games at a win rate a shade under eighty nine percent, and took four of the thirty one evening cups, on 7, 9, 16 and 30 May, still winning the $50,000 bracket on the penultimate night. In CS, Anastas Palin PH went 153-4 from 299 appearances for 40 championships, 45 podiums and $2,447,400, went sixteen from sixteen in point bearing events, and did not drop a match inside the worldwide daily series at 110-0. April is the other half of it. The MOBA side records no appearance before the thirteenth and still finished third in that game on 110 titles and $788,910, while the CS side lost its first three finals, then won nine of the last sixteen days including five consecutively between the eighteenth and the twenty second, for 99-5 and $1,208,000. The club closed April on 119 championships, $1,996,910 and an 80.3 percent win rate from roughly half a calendar.

The deductions are real and I would not hide them. Two months is the shortest supported history of any club I would place this high. A large share of those May point bearing wins came in a circuit region whose biggest edition of the month returned 16 point claims, against 711 claims across the fifteen events of the deepest region. The MOBA haul came mostly from a tier where $5,000 was the ceiling, and four evening titles from thirty one nights is modest conversion in the only MOBA bracket paying serious money. And on each of the last three days of April its CS side reached the final and lost it. A side that goes 110-0 in the one CS event open to everybody is not being carried, but nothing in either May calendar made choosing where to play expensive.

The alternative I take most seriously is juster, the only club present in all four months of the record and the only one holding a head to head that actually settled something. It finished third in February’s club order from the heaviest schedule on that board, 889 appearances, 221 last four finishes, 249 losses, $829,140 and 41 championships, while juster took two CS days worth $100,000 each inside three days at the peak of the side running away with that game, for 36-4 and $302,100. That roster then went 96-1 in March with thirteen titles and $1.73 million, and 113-2 in April with fifteen of the thirty titles available, nineteen finals from twenty nine entries and $1,713,000, carrying the club to $2,106,880, the largest cash total on April’s board. In May it went 141-8 for 23 championships, 34 podiums and $1,181,660, twelve titles from fourteen point bearing starts at 27-0, and one of the three regional gates on the final day, with the club closing on $1,331,160 and 32 championships from 932 appearances at 593-220 and a first place league position. The weak half is the second board. juster turned 824 February appearances into 39 titles and 245 losses, added eighteen April titles and five daily runner up finishes, and does not appear in the May evidence at all. If your standard is that a change at the top has to be earned by beating the incumbent rather than out scoring it in a separate bracket, you hold this club first, and May gave that test nothing to work with, because the two barely met.

Washed Team is the club I hold loosest of all, because it owns the best rate in the record and the emptiest closing weeks. It was February’s runner up on $997,590 from 572 appearances at 486-68, essentially all of it from Washed Team at 84 championships and 485-67. In April it took $713,280 and nine championships from 501 appearances while Washed Team went 72-0 across the eighteen CS days it entered, for three titles, six finals and $516,000, and sat out eight of the final eleven days. In May the club went 349 wins against 40 losses from 418 appearances for 35 championships and $1,135,950: its MOBA side 299-34 with twelve evening cups between 4 and 20 May, every one of them 7-0, and its CS side 50-6 from 82 appearances for $327,600. Twelve wins in a single month’s headline MOBA bracket is more than this record shows for anybody. Then both halves stopped inside a day of each other, with three consecutive second places from 21 May and eight evening cups left blank, a last CS start on 23 May and no entry at any of the three gates. Discount a chosen calendar lightly and this is your first place. Refuse to discount it and the case shrinks to the days it picked.

Skillbox still owns the biggest single club month anywhere here, and February remains the only month in the record where one club led MOBA and CS at the same time: $2,332,890 and 166 championships from 847 appearances at 719-60 with 189 podiums, built from Skillbox at $1,229,490 and 155 titles on 674-57, and Skillbox at $1,103,400 and eleven titles on 45-3, ten of those landing after the CS daily pool doubled on 13 February. March added 477-55 with 76 titles from 534 MOBA appearances, and 86-2 with eleven titles and $1.46 million in CS, the two cleanest loss columns in the whole record. April thinned to 270 appearances and still returned 11 championships and $579,530 at 199-34, including the CS bracket taken directly off that game’s dominant side on the twelfth and a sixteen roster MOBA daily bracket on the twenty sixth. May is silence, since neither side appears in the month’s evidence. Nothing in the record says this club declined; the circuits grew around it and there is no recent result to check that against, which is why it slides rather than disappears. One qualification belongs in the open rather than in a footnote. The published record does not attribute both of those sides to the same club in every month. February and April place them under Skillbox, while March’s ESMO article credits the CS side to Ferenheit Esport and the MOBA side to EnergyPot Wizards. The roster lines run continuously from month to month; the club line through March does not, and a four month club ledger assembled over an attribution that moves is a thing to hold loosely rather than to bank.

Two clubs answer all of the above on volume and fail the same test. Pharaohs of Eternity recorded 209 championships in April, more than any club on that board, plus $1,681,760 and a 1,505-275 record, almost all of it from Pharaohs of Eternity, which won eleven of the final fourteen daily events including the two deepest MOBA brackets April produced, both at 7-0, while its second board returned $6,900 and no championship. May was heavy again, $1,331,742 and 181 championships from 1,903 appearances at 1,632-256, but nineteen evening entries returned a single title, on 2 May, with second place on five separate nights. Solary led almost every April volume column, 2,063 appearances, 1,710 wins and 376 top four finishes, and held the MOBA daily circuit for the first sixteen days through Solary at 173 titles and $1,640,140 from 1,977 matches, with no championship at all on its second board. In May it took $1,189,530 and 60 championships from 1,914 appearances at 1,441-450, entering twenty seven of the thirty one evening cups and winning nine, six of them from ten entries after 20 May, in the window when the side monopolising that bracket stopped showing up. Two heavy months each, one contested game each.

HeliTy is the answer for managers who weight the strength of the field above the size of the pile, and May is the month its long standing weakness stopped applying. Its CS side, HeliTy, won once in February, on the closing day, for $100,000 of a $228,180 club month, went 91-2 in March with four titles and nineteen top four finishes, then 107-5 in April with fourteen semifinals, one final and no trophy while the club as a whole finished 201-134 from 380 appearances and $302,010 with zero championships across two boards. In May it took five point bearing titles in the only circuit region that was genuinely crowded, including a 46 claim open and back to back titles on 29 and 30 May, going 156-19 across 234 appearances for $428,936 on a club line of $505,536 and seven championships. Four months of a side that rarely loses, and the first month it converted where converting was hardest. The counter is scale, and $505,536 against $4,026,580 is not a gap one strength of field adjustment closes. Boom Esport makes a smaller version of the same argument: Boom Esport entered all thirty April days for 110-10, two finals and no title, then turned May into $460,630 on 135-14, largely from second places, and a clean 3-0 through the deepest of the three closing gates. Two championships is still a thin return, and one gate is not a career.

Two more clubs have to be handled by their absence, because the record is short enough that a lapse reads like a verdict when it is not. Ferenheit Esport owns the other genuine three month thread, and it is a MOBA thread. Ferenheit Esport closed February with five hourly wins across the twenty seventh and twenty eighth, led March’s MOBA cash table outright with over $1.1 million, 141 championships and a win rate near 86 percent from 1,054 appearances, then produced April’s sharpest conversion in that game at 287-38 for 38 titles and $348,180, with no recorded activity after the thirteenth and nothing in the May evidence. Its April CS board played fourteen matches for four losses and $15,000 without reaching a semifinal, so it fielded a second side rather than contesting a second game. OpTic Gaming is the opposite failure: 1,484 April appearances, 225 top four finishes and $667,090, with all 34 of its championships in MOBA and none in CS, where it entered all thirty days and lost both finals it reached, while OpTic Gaming carries the longest continuous workload in the MOBA record and is absent from May as well. Rarely losing and rarely converting has been a stable identity across this record, and no club has yet turned it into a title haul.

None of this order is settled, and the reason sits in the evidence rather than in taste. Cash rewards the game that paid six figures a day to one winner, championship counts reward the game that handed out hundreds of them, and May added a point ladder in one game and not the other. So here is the concrete thing to argue out. If the CS point circuit runs again and Anastas Palin PH repeats a May shaped month in both games while again taking most of its point bearing titles in a region whose largest bracket returned 16 point claims, what would juster need to keep first place, an unbeaten point bearing run of its own in the deepest region, a MOBA board that finally commands its game, or nothing short of beating it in a final the way it did on each of the last three days of April?