any fan that's been consistently following cs or paid attention can easily tell. Take a look:
The old legends from Sweden and France such as the original lineups from Fnatic and NiP, Happy, Shox, and kennyS, are now gone. Much of the original NA cs players during that period are either also gone like Hiko or reduced to irrelevancy/doomed to continue falling such as EliGE. Astralis has been reduced to atoms with only device, dupreeh (although he might as well one of the next), and Magisk of the original roster having any sort of life left in them, and the latter two still thrived post-Astralis while Astralis itself is getting close to falling out of the top 30 despite dominating at the top during the late years of the 2010s. The ones from North have faded since the org shutting down. The SK/Luminosity roster core that once terrorized and dominated CS before Astralis took over has also been reduced to afterthoughts. The Polish Quintet in VP had their last dance in 2017/2018. Other players such as GuardiaN, Zeus, chrisJ, etc are now also basically gone.
All of them are now has-beens in the cs scene. It's only a matter of time when some of the remaining players of that era become has-beens as well such as NiKo, s1mple, and karrigan.
NiKo's simply speedrunning into has-been status over the past year or so. Winning IEM Katowice 2023 isn't going to save him.
(and before anyone says otherwise about karrigan, he still has life since FaZe is one of the only remaining teams during the 2015-2019 era that still hasn't completely fallen to the depths of the abyss. Even if rain and karrigan are the only ones left of the team in that era.)
2023-06-03 04:49