It’s unexpected, but once you hear the news it all falls into place. Legendary Counter-Strike: Global Offensive player (for the equally famous team Astralis) ‘Gla1ve’ has announced on Twitter that he’s simply burned out, and taking a three-month hiatus from competitive Counter-Strike to combat the stress.
He states in the TwitLonger (which has become a tradition for esport players at this point) that he’s going to commit himself to rest and recover and that he fully plans on returning to Astralis after a three-month period.
He has given Astralis notice of his mental fatigue yesterday, after working with the team doctor exhaustively to attempt to recover from the constant stress of matches.
Toughest decision of my life.
Read: https://t.co/iO61jvOMzV
— Łukasz Rossander (@gla1ve_cs) May 19, 2020
This is interesting, as Lukas ‘Gla1ve’ Rossander actually gave the sound-byte that spawned an article on the surmounting exhaustion that professional Counter-Strike: Global Offensive players are dealing with, competing endlessly in order to earn a living.
The current system of Valve that allows a multitude of organizations to host a tourney, and those results playing into a team’s global rating, means that teams can’t simply elect to skip matches for a few months to recover; at least not without drastic consequences.
Since that article, there hasn’t been much respite for professional players, even with COVID-19 bringing the majority of matches back to an online format, meaning less travel for the teams.
Astralis alone has had 17 matches in the past month and a half, meaning roughly one match every two days. Of those matches, they won the vast majority of them; losing once to a pristine-looking Fnatic.
For the interim, Astralis has replaced ‘Gla1ve’ with Jakob ‘JUGi’ Hansen, appropriately from Denmark. At 23 years of age, ‘JUGi’ has played for six teams within various tiers of professional Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, most notably with stints in North and Heroic. During his time on North, North placed in the Group Stage of StarLadder Major Berlin 2019.
His arrival does bring about a few questions in regards to precisely how well Astralis will perform without one of their star players in upcoming matches. JUGi hasn’t played on Astralis before, although it’s likely he’s scrimmaged with them behind the scenes.
With Astralis having two major tournaments upcoming, however, it will be difficult for JUGi to fill the roomy shoes of ‘Gla1ve’. Dreamhack Masters Spring 2020 has just begun today, and is slated to end on June 14. BLAST Premier Spring 2020 begins on May 31, and lasts until June 7th. Poor showings in these could adversely affect the team in future tourneys.
