Many people criticized Astralis for failing to qualify for the Shanghai Major. But not everyone knows that Astralis competed in the European RMRs without Nicolai “dev1ce” Reedtz. Alexander “br0” Bro had to temporarily replace him because he struggled with stress-related problems again.
Today, Astralis announced that dev1ce is finally back to his usual role. The organization also announced that br0 has finally been released. Most likely, a new team was found for him and he will start to compete again in 2025.
Dev1ce’s Struggles And Their Consequences
For a top esports athlete, good mental health is one of the most important preconditions for success. When you’re dealing with personal problems that simply ruin your focus or make it difficult for you to deal with the pressure of big events, your performance drops considerably.
At the highest level of CS2, even a 10% nerf can turn a great player into an average player. If the problem is big enough, even the act of training and playing professionally becomes difficult.
At the end of 2021, after a modest season with Ninjas in Pyjamas, dev1ce decided to take a break. Nobody suspected that he wouldn’t be back for a whole year.
When he returned, he went back to Astralis and started competing. The team had a lot of promising results in 2023 and 2024, partly because of dev1ce’s performance. He was playing like his old self again and everything looked great.
But a few months ago, his old enemy returned for a brief period and he asked to be replaced again. For Casper “cadiaN” Møller, who joined the team in September this year, this incident was very unfortunate.
After failing to qualify for the first CS2 Major of the year with Team Liquid, he certainly hoped to at least qualify for the second one. Because he’s the IGL of the team, much of the CS2 community blamed him for this failure. But it wasn’t his fault.
