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Esports

After a decade of action, Cloud9 is departing competitive Counter-Strike

The organisation may one day return but has "no immediate plans".
Ben Lyons Senior Editor 18 February 2025

The era of seeing Cloud9's logo and jerseys in competitive Counter-Strike is over... at least for the time being. The North American team has decided to exit the esport after a decade of fielding teams and squads in the scene.

This has been confirmed in a post on X where C9 notes that it is "taking a step back from Counter-Strike 2" and that "while we have no immediate plans to re-enter, we love CS and are always on the lookout for opportunities."

https://x.com/C9CSGO/status/1890476106895302665

With the exit in mind, C9 has also decided to go separate ways with coach Konstantin "groove" Pikiner and team manager Aleksandr "sweety10" Shcherbakov, meaning both are now able to look for opportunities elsewhere.

Senior Editor Ben was a Senior Editor at Gamereactor UK. When he wasn’t writing, editing or filming for Gamereactor, he could usually be found playing an FPS or getting lost in a sprawling RPG.
Full profile Gamereactor author since October 2020 · 18,577 published articles
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