Nothing beats a bit of shock when it comes to transfers. Think of it. You’re sitting in your nine-to-five job thinking about where you’ll get lunch or at the back of your Spanish class daydreaming about how your Faceit pugs will pan out later that evening when you get home from school. You pull out your phone to check if that girl you like has texted you back, but she hasn’t. It’s just your friend sending you another Instagram reel of two chimpanzees holding hands with the message “me and you bro”.
So you head to Twitter (I’m not calling it X, you cannot make me call it X), and there it is, the thing you never thought you would witness. Casper “cadiaN” Møller posing for the camera in an Astralis jersey. At first, you think it’s a troll. It has to be some Don Haci edit nonsense or one of those “leakers” like harumi right? But no, the face of Heroic for so many years donning the colors of the side that knocked his team out of BLAST Fall Finals in Copenhagen to a thundering ovation from his compatriots.
I saw the headlines, I saw the pictures, I saw the quotes but alas I continued to think that my own eyes were deceiving me. That got me thinking, what other moves in the last eight years that I have been an avid lover of Counter-Strike made me feel this same way? Feeling as though the landscape of the scene had been irreversibly altered. So here we are. Here are my top five most shocking transfers in Counter-Strike history.
#5: Virtus.pro sign electroNic
Maybe there is some recency bias on this one, but Virtus.pro’s stunning swoop to secure the signature of Denis “electroNic” Sharipov truly shocked me as it did with many others in the community. I woke up on the morning of the 15th of April and for whatever reason, Twitter was my first destination. It is never my first destination. I saw the announcement and proceeded to stare blankly at my phone for a full two minutes, questioning whether I had woken up at all
We all remember that the Cloud9 roster was faltering at the time. Billed as a CIS super team, the boys in blue had failed to live up to the high expectations and bar that were set for them by the community. Under the 25-year-old’s leadership, the likes of Sergey “Ax1Le” Rykhtorov had fallen off statistically but with Kirill “Boombl4” Mikhaylov being brought in to take the reigns, it looked as though electroNic would be the centerpiece of Cloud9 for the long run considering the achievements and accolades he had collected as a superstar. While the move was certainly a shocking one, five months on it has not paid dividends as the Russian lineup has just been eliminated from ESL Pro League in another underwhelming showing.
Photo courtesy of BLAST/Stephanie Lindgren
#4: Stewie2K signs for SK
This was my first taste of shock in Counter-Strike. Back in March 2018, two months removed from breaking every FaZe fan’s heart (including yours truly) in the Grand Final of the ELEAGUE Boston Major, Jacky “Stewie2K” Yip jumped ship from Cloud9 to join the legendary Brazilian lineup led by Gabriel “FalleN” Toledo. Funnily enough, Stewie and co. had actually managed to eliminate SK en route to their ELEAGUE title however the magic of their run in Boston soon faded once the Brazilian’s came calling for Stewie.
Replacing Epitácio “TACO” de Melo in the squad, the move would lead to the departure from speaking Portuguese which was the native tongue of the entire lineup prior to Stewie’s arrival. Despite the firepower upgrade, a move to the legendary MIBR brand, and the acquisition of Stewie’s former colleague Tarik “tarik” Celik from Cloud9, the move never quite paid off with only a ZOTAC Cup Masters title to show for it by the time the team returned to an entirely Brazilian five-man lineup.
Photo courtesy of Dreamhack/Adela Sznajder
#3: Whatever the hell GODSENT was
Back in the stone age of 2016, there were no signs and no warnings for one of the most shocking swoops in CS to that point. No reports, no leaks, just a good old-fashioned bombshell being dropped on the scene as it was announced that Jesper “JW” Wecksell, Robin “flusha” Rönnquist and Freddy “KRIMZ” Johansson would be moving from fnatic to GODSENT with John “wenton” Eriksson, Simon “twist” Eliasson and Jonas “Lekr0” Olofsson being sent the other way in exchange.
The core that had won three Major championships would not go on to achieve any meaningful results, with JW and flusha scampering back to the comfort of fnatic just six months after the switch. Krimz would jump ship even sooner, transferring back to fnatic just over a two months on from the shocking move and residing with the UK-based org to this day. While the move didn’t result in any big wins, it did result in one of my favorite comments under a YouTube video that has been stuck in my head for years now at this point. GODSENT the wrong team. Brilliant.
GODSENT at ELEAGUE Atlanta 2017
#2: Kjaerbye switches to North
What is it with Danes and jumping ship to their biggest rivals? To this day, Markus “Kjaerbye” Kjaerbye still holds the record for the youngest Major MVP. At the tender age of 18, the young Dane performed remarkably on the world stage, leading Astralis to their first Major title by beating Virtus.pro in the grand final. This marked the end of the extended stint of stuttering on stage for the Danish lineup who had developed a remarkable reputation for choking when the going got tough.
When we think of Astralis, most of us are haunted by the nightmare-inducing run of dominance that altered the meta and many feared would never end. Kjaerbye was on the other side of the barrel however, having jumped ship to North in a shocking switch with the captain of Astralis Lukas “gla1ve” Rossander claiming “Less than 2 hours before the press conference, we found out Kjaerbye has signed with North.” The move would go down in history as one of the single worst career decisions made by a player, as Astralis would go on to win countless titles including three more Majors without their young star, while Kjaerbye announced his retirement in June 2021.
Photo courtesy of ESL
#1: dev1ce becomes a Ninja
At least Nicolai “dev1ce” Reedtz had the originality to make the switch to a team that wasn’t a direct Danish rival. I still remember where I was when this move was announced. I was in the middle of a game of VALORANT which was hip and cool at the time. I checked my phone and it was as if the rapture had come on Twitter. I sat AFK in spawn, dazed and confused as I tried to figure out just why one of the best players in the world had departed for Ninjas in Pyjamas of all teams.
What was even stranger than the move itself was dev1ce’s tenure on NIP. Competing for just eight months with the Ninjas which was almost entirely restricted to online competitions as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2021, the Dane surrounded by Swedes would clinch Intel Extreme Masters XVI – Fall: Europe and a Top 8 finish at the PGL Stockholm Major. Before the conclusion of 2021, dev1ce would take a step back from the team for “personal reasons” before conveniently returning to Astralis a year later. Although this move feels like a distant memory, some of us still remember that NIP were “5 steps ahead” of Astralis.
Photo courtesy of BLAST/Michal Konkol
Looking back at this list I have come to this realisation. Shocking moves somehow end up forming some of the worst and most disappointing runs possible. Good luck cadiaN!
