This page provides information about a website of one of the seasonal sponsors of THE FINALS, HOLTOW, and its dissection by Easter Egg hunters.
Initial Discovery
After THE FINALS released, there were many new cosmetics added to the game, including a bundle called HOLTOW Fine Print. This bundle included a unique, animated M11 skin and a HOLTOW-themed sticker. The most intriguing part of this bundle was the sticker, because it resembled a scannable QR code, seen below. The description of this cosmetics is: "HOLTOW CEO Quemby Rutile is pleased to offer all-risk coverage to contestants in THE FINALS."
The QR has an offset red dot in it and the writing says H5942617857-VRI. Scanning the QR code will lead to the website holtow.com. In the center of the page was a mysterious blinking red square, shown below.
Investigation
The original page had a circular mask over the square so that it appeared as a dot. The GIF is 8x8px and is named 5.15.25.gif. 5.15.25 could be deciphered to E.O.Y. This is an anagram of a common acronym that Rob uses, meaning Open Your Eyes.
It was also discovered that the exact color code for this shade of red was CE2029, or Firetruck Red.
The GIF has 2 layers (red and black) that play for 0.5 seconds each in a loop.
Hacked Version
On February 3rd, after hotfix 1.6.1, the website got changed and the red blinking square no longer appeared. Instead, it displayed a "hacked" version of the website, with a glitching digital-like GIF filling the page, seen below. The GIF is named _-_-_.gif.
Investigation
The first thing that hunters noticed was some small, C64-style text saying >READY and “”,8,1. This is most likely a reference to the C64 LOAD command: LOAD “filename”,8,1 – load a machine language program.
>READY (middle left)
“”,8,1 (middle right)
Hunters also found hidden text that reads WE ARE in a similar font to the S Lies message. Later, block font letters were found that spelled out C N S. Together, the overall message reads WE ARE CNS.
WE ARE
CNS
The last detail in this GIF was extremely well-hidden, and had to be revealed and pieced together throughout multiple frames. It is the signature for German artist Paul Klee.
The faint signature revealed by hunters
Paul Klee's signature
Lore Implications
It seems that the influence of the mysterious "CNS" is spreading. In the Writing on the Wall lore video, Scotty and June mention that Sofia, the CEO of OSPUZE, has also been dealing with hacks as well. Although the exact origin of these hacks is unknown, they are starting to interfere with the sponsors of THE FINALS (including HOLTOW), rather than just in-game or in release trailers.