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After a year of withdrawing from Valve’s first person tactical shooter, North American giants Cloud9 return back to Counter Strike : Global Offensive with the signing of ex-Gambit players around Vladislav “nafany” Gorshkov and co who briefly played under the banner of “Players” in the past month.
Cloud9 who were last seen fielding their Colossus project are back after a year of sabbatical, this time with a CIS line-up featuring Abay “Hobbit” Khassenov, Dmitrii “sh1ro” Sokolov, Sergei “Ax1Le” Rykhtorov, Vladislav “nafany” Gorshkov and Timofei “interz” Iakushin.
A series of unfortunate events had indeed forced Gambit to release and force these players to play under a new banner dubbed as “Players” following the Russian invasion over Ukraine and other political tensions leading up around.
“This is an exciting time for Counter Strike, with LAN events returning we’re seeing incredible interest amongst fans. I would definitely say the resurgence is well under way.” – Jack Etienne, Co-Founder and CEO of Cloud9.
The Los-Angeles based organization had previously parted ways with their players from the European Colossus project led by Alex “ALEX” McMeekin, an initiative kickstarted by Henry “HenryG” Greer and Aleksandar “kassad” Trifunović before halting their further development into the scene citing financial hiccups and inability to locate the team to the United States due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
The community has indeed been familiar with nafany and co’s achievements throughout the online era revolving around the period between 2020-21 with a plethora of championships at S-tier events that too when Gambit Youngsters were promoted to the main lineup of the organization.
Cloud9 sign ex-Gambit (now Players) after just 3 days of having secured a Legends spot at the forthcoming PGL Antwerp Major 2022 as the North American side would now travel to Belgium with a new-look CS:GO roster featuring a set of similar and valuable faces in the league.
Cloud9 CSGO Roster:
- Vladislav “nafany” Gorshkov
- Dmitry “sh1ro” Sokolov
- Sergey “Ax1Le” Rykhtorov
- Timofey “interz” Yakushin
- Abay “HObbit” Khasenov
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