Unfortunately, s1mple is a less than stellar teammate. He has been harsh and critical to his teammates, creating an atmosphere that can make certain people play worse. However, he was able to find a friend in Hiko, which is why he got onto Team Liquid and was able to become a better teammate. The journey of this young man began not too long ago, but he has already done so much in the realm of Counter-Strike worthy of chronicling. Before getting his big break, s1mple hovered around the bottom of the CIS scene. What is notable about s1mple playing with B1ad3 on his earliest teams is that B1ad3 has an eye for talent and can create good teams with seemingly nothing, much like pronax and his Godsent team but in the context of Russian speakers. B1ad3 must have spotted s1mple from PUGs and took him under his wing, developing him into the player that he is today. Before HellRaisers, s1mple floated around various teams and did nothing of consequence, something that could be excused when one is so young and is an unrealized talent but cannot be so easily dismissed now. On HellRaisers, s1mple would almost always perform. It was very rare that he would go negative and often had to carry HellRaisers. Due to a horrible tournament structure, HellRaisers lost the final after securing the next two maps convincingly and losing the last one very narrowly. Game Show League Season 1 was just one of the many disappointments for s1mple, but when the rest of the team provided some help, good things happened. At DreamHack Winter 2014, HellRaisers was in an extremely easy group. However, they especially dominated it by coming out first of the group by winning against Fnatic and Cloud9. Cloud9 went on to provide some commentary at the event, but Fnatic contested with LDLC, the champions of the tournament, for a spot in the finals. HellRaisers lost to NiP, finalists of the tournament, convincingly in the quarterfinals when NiP was able to see through their tactics and did something about it. After an even worse thrashing by LDLC in the finals of a FACEIT LAN, s1mple was left with a bitter taste in his mouth while he went on the end of year break to reflect on the many defeats he suffered with HellRaisers. Though s1mple indicated his admiration for his veteran teammates, things probably broke down within the team at some point as they always do with s1mple. How can anyone blame him for being angry? Yes, he has had trouble being integrated into a team structure, but people who grow up in broken homes or have come back from war are helped and rehabilitated. HellRaisers was just the beginning of his troubles. Playing as a team means putting in the hours and playing around skilled teammates, something s1mple has never completely received. After HellRaisers, s1mple joined daT Team, which was picked up by FlipSid3 two weeks after he joined. Famously on FlipSid3, s1mple was unable to play in ESL tournaments. FlipSid3 had to get a stand-in for s1mple when they attended ESL One Katowice. He could drop 30 bombs like they were nothing, ensuring them qualification to many tournaments. Copenhagen Games was a rather poorly run event with an unusual system, but some top teams attended. ESWC 2015, though it had so many delays, was perhaps one of the most groundbreaking events in CS:GO. Hiko brought back to NA, as well as revealed to the world, a new training regime and the very unusual use of numbers instead of names to call out spots. But most importantly, it formed the Hiko-s1mple relationship which got s1mple on to Team Liquid. After ESWC, s1mple had been kicked off FlipSid3. There was also some sort of trouble with HellRaisers buying him out from FlipSid3 and that fell through. Instead, s1mple would end up in a similar position as Hiko and be a top level pro without a team. The most notable of them all was s1mple doing a giveaway and refusing to give the knife to the guy that had won it. The Ukrainian hotshot also would constantly criticize his teammates in FPL, making enemies out of other pros who may have been able to help him out. Hiko was the only exception because of how he was able to connect with s1mple as a friend and mentor him. Hiko has also been very known to place winning above all else. When Hiko came to Team Liquid, he brought a mentality that was to never settle for anything less than victory. Since Hiko has been on the team, new talents like Pimp, koosta, and JDM have joined and washed up players like adreN and FugLy have been kicked. The player with the most skill in the world had no team, no buyout, and was itching to win, and was already a friend of his. For someone also committed to winning, recruiting s1mple was a simple decision. The first string of LANs were not good for s1mple. After qualifying to the MLG Major, s1mple had cried about how he was carried for the first time by his team in an interview. He appreciated the people who played on his team and understood that even he can mess up. That all was reversed soon after the Major Qualifier. Despite going further than any other NA team had gone before, it was the decision of Team Liquid to kick s1mple. Before bringing Team Liquid and North America even further than they have ever gone before, s1mple spent his time much as he had before. It seemed as though his career was ruined. He was playing with a team called Worst Players, and with s1mple, they accomplished nothing but bombing out of a StarLadder event and a DreamHack Qualifier. Fortunately, confidence, and arrogance, is something he has in abundance. His showing speaks for itself. He played supremely well. It was as if they were destined to destroy everyone, but everyone also knew that they were destined to be destroyed in the finals versus SK. And everyone knows that not even a god like s1mple can break their destiny, and so they lost. Not wanting to make the same mistake as they did with adreN, Team Liquid has made it very clear that s1mple is out. His skills are simply unmatched. His positioning may not be on point, but he has impeccable aim with every kind of gun to get him out of such situations. Anything less would be sacrilege. Photo credit: HLTV , Esporks, Dreamhack, and Talk Esport Follow me on Twitter.
