Tilt refers to an emotional state in which a player loses control over their decisions due to irritation, anger or frustration. The cause is usually a string of failures: losing an important gunfight, a frustrating defeat to a weaker opponent, toxic behavior from allies in chat, or a referee decision the player feels was unfair. In this state, a person starts playing more aggressively and recklessly than usual, forgets about tactics, and makes mistakes they would never make while calm.
The word comes from poker, where tilt described the state of a player after a big loss, when they would start making unjustifiably risky bets trying to win it back. The term moved into esports almost unchanged — the mechanism is the same: one failure triggers an emotional reaction, which leads to the next one, and that one to another. The result is a chain reaction, where one bad round or one lost game can drag down an entire series.
Tilt manifests differently depending on the game. In CS2, a tilted player might start mindlessly rushing into enemy positions without team support or blow the whole economy on absurd purchases. In Dota 2, tilt often shows up as a refusal to play as a team: the player starts farming (gathering gold and experience from monsters and structures) alone, ignoring allies' pushes, or dives into unfavorable fights out of a desire to avenge a death.
Tilt also shows up separately in communication: the player starts lashing out at teammates in voice chat, blaming everyone around them for their failures, and losing focus on the game itself. This is especially noticeable in ranked games (a competitive mode with a points and rank system), where a losing streak following tilt is a common occurrence known as a "tilt streak."
Professional teams and analysts take tilt seriously: resilience to emotional swings is considered part of preparation, no less important than mechanical skills. A player who can quickly regain composure after a setback is valued just as much as one with good aim, because one person's tilt on a team can wreck the game for the entire five.