It was bound to happen, although Josh ‘Steel’ Nissan wanted one last hurrah with bringing Chaos EC into relevance marking the second team that he’s worked with to bring them to a higher tier of Counter-Strike play prior to his inevitable departure.
Josh will be transitioning over to a content creator for Riot’s hot new first-person shooter, Valorant, finally leaving the Counter-Strike scene after roughly a decade.
The likely straw on the proverbial camel’s back was the insipid verdict back in 2014 where he was indicted for match-fixing Counter-Strike games for profit; a move that resulted in a permanent ban from Majors.
This ultimately meant that, in spite of how the scene may view him currently, his play within professional Counter-Strike is extremely limited.
Multiple members of the CS:GO scene have put forward a statement of regret and well-wishes on his departure.
Regardless of his spotty record, it’s admittedly difficult to deny his intrinsic value as an IGL and mentor for young talent that is looking to rise through the ranks into a professional scene, and many are figuring that Josh will continue to do much of the same within the professional Valorant scene, with likely a less pronounced spotlight on his previous dealings back in 2014.
These match fixings were revealed by Richard Lewis to take place between iBUYPOWER and NetCodeGuides, where Steel was on the iBP team; the team that agreed to throw the match on purpose in order to profit from betting, as iBP were heavily favored to win the match-up.
While the case, as a whole, does shed light on the difficulty of amending past transgressions, it also shows Valve‘s frank disposition of not being willing to barter with past offenders; an aspect that has recently been brought to light with Jammpi’s case against Valve.
Yet to fixate solely on the past misdeeds would be egregious for a player that has cemented himself as a strong IGL for Chaos EC, bringing them into a modern standard of top-tier Counter-Strike (that has thus far avoided the current wave of scandal with coaches using spectating bugs) while dealing out a plethora of losses to the likes of MIBR, 100 Thieves, FURUA, and Cloud 9 as they have begun their climb towards the top.
Overall, bearing in mind Josh Nissan’s recent works within the scene, a shift to Valorant brings a rare opportunity to begin anew with the experience of uber-competitive esports under his belt. The vast majority of the professional Counter-Strike scene wish Josh Nissan well, and hope he can settle in new roots in Valorant.
