The competitive CSGO scene has been in a state of steady decline over the past few months. Not only has the COVID-19 pandemic laid a negative impact on the esports scene surrounding CSGO, but the rise of Riot’s new competitive shooter Valorant has also made several CSGO pros retire since its launch in early April.
According to a recent report by Reddit user u/ImThour, Valve’s first-person shooter has lost over 200 professional CSGO players in 2020 itself – a number more than the past 5 years combined.
A number this high is certainly alarming for the professional CSGO scene and the community in general, since this could potentially imply the beginning of the end for a title that is still managing to rock a concurrent player count of over 1 million players every single day, thanks to Operation Broken Fang.
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The above-mentioned list of over 200 players quitting CSGO contains 60 notable pros including the likes of ShahZaM, freakazoid, or ScreaM.
Here’s a list of notable players who announced their retirement from professional CSGO this year:
List Of Retired CSGO Pro Players
North America (33):
- swag
- MAC-1
- TenZ
- reltuC
- WARDELL
- Subroza
- ShahZaM
- anger
- fRoD
- kaboose
- Zellsis
- freakazoid
- Laski
- dapr
- roca
- Infinite
- jdm64
- hazed
- drone
- Hiko
- Relyks
- witmer
- nitr0
- vice
- steel
- Warden
- yay
- ANDROID
- dazzLe
- daps
- s0m
- moose
- ryann
South America (2):
- showliana
- ryotzz
Europe (8):
- SmithZz
- pyth
- mixwell
- freddieb
- ScreaM
- loWel
- nukkye
- xms
CIS (4):
- peet
- arch
- ANGE1
- Johnta
Asia (11):
- Laz
- crow
- barce
- takej
- Reita
- stax
- glow
- Jinx
- Ace
- xeta
- poem
Oceania (5):
- zeph
- emagine
- tucks
- DickStacy
- Texta
Source: Avi Thour
