The world of Counter Strike woke up to the shocking development yesterday with the news of Nicolai ‘dev1ce’ Reedtz leaving his former team. The move from Astralis to join NiP sent tremors in the industry. Nicolai was one of the key assets in Astralis who help the team win several dozen trophies including four CS:GO majors.
The 25-year-old who has won over five titles of MVP by HLTV.org was considered to be the top CS:GO player in the world alongside the likes of Oleksandr ‘S1mple’ Kostyliev and Mathieu ‘ZywOo’ Herbaut – who was recently featured in Forbes 30 Under 30.
The news of dev1ce leaving Astralis did come as a shocker to the community. The most likely scenario of a transfer would’ve been between NiP, Fnatic, GODSENT, and other Swedish counterparts. Or under an extreme ordeal, Cloud9 or Team Liquid would’ve made the move to complete their roster with such talent.
But it didn’t happen and NiP apparently won the bid.
In a conversation yesterday with TalkEsport’s Founding Editor Deepak ‘DpK’ Ojha, Nicolai ‘Dev1ce’ Reedtz responded in the most candid manner on how the decision on moving to NiP followed up. Nicolai opened up on how tough the decision to move to Sweden was and how the new language will affect the communications among the players.
Why did dev1ce leave Astralis?
In the discussion yesterday it was unveiled that the decision was simply not based on a reason, rather it was the complexity of thoughts and concerns of the future.
To-and-Fro to Denmark
Nicolai is staying with his girlfriend in Sweden for over four years, in the city of Stockholm where NiP has a base. Astralis, which has its quarters in Denmark is 650 K.M. away, creating a problem of commutation.
In other terms, Reedtz had to travel a lot to maintain his personal and professional commitments, which will now not be a problem when he’s already in Sweden and joined a Swedish organization.
Aspirations & new experiences
Although Reedtz holds a reputation of being among the topmost CS:GO players in the world. There always has been an undercurrent on how he can do better or if there was a need to explore for him to become better.
It was confirmed by the man himself yesterday. In another question asked by a fellow journalist, “Do you think you will have a better chance in becoming the world’s best CS:GO player in NiP,” to which Reedtz responded, “yes, I do.”
Mental health, burnout
In a statement to the press on the choice to move to NiP, Nicolai had said “the major factor in joining was the way NiP takes care of mental health.“
At the live interview session though, he did clarify that it was misconstrued. He added that this was a misleading issue and he didn’t have any problems with mental health or overworking issues at Astralis either.
The reasons as aforementioned didn’t strike to be singular in nature but were little on the misty side of things. The move has most certainly stirred the discussion in the CS:GO community which was rather dozing off.
And yeah, no one saw this coming. Great job Ninjas & Astralis!
