Back to Counter-Strike? One of VALORANT’s first pros retires immediately after CS2 launch

It's what people are thinking.

CS:GO default graphic showing two soldiers on a pink background.
Image via Valve

Jacob “pyth” Mourujärvi, a former CS:GO player for Ninjas in Pyjamas and a former VALORANT player for G2, has retired from Riot Games’ FPS yesterday, the same day Valve released Counter-Strike 2 for limited testing and announced the update will launch worldwide this summer.

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Pyth was on the sidelines of VALORANT‘s competitive landscape since August 2022, when he departed the Asian team Bleed Esports. He was one of the first CS:GO pros to switch to VALORANT in 2020 and most notably played for G2 between June 2020 and June 2021, helping the squad spearheaded by mixwell to dominate the early days of VALORANT in Europe and win tournaments like Red Bull Home Ground in January 2021 and BLAST Twitch Invitational in September 2020.

Pyth hasn’t revealed what he’ll do moving forward. He simply said he’s retiring from Riot Games’ FPS.

Before retweeting the CS2 launch and announcing his retirement from VALORANT yesterday, pyth had not tweeted since December 2022, when he said he was going to focus on getting his driver’s license and was going back to grinding in January 2023.

His retirement from VALORANT left his fans wondering whether he’s considering a return to the professional Counter-Strike scene. Pyth played in a number of CS:GO teams besides NiP, such as SK Gaming, n!faculty, and Luminosity Gaming.

The Swedish rifler helped NiP to win two tier-one tournaments in 2016—DreamHack Masters Malmö and IEM Oakland—and left them in 2017. He continued playing for lesser-known CS:GO teams until 2020, when he made the switch to VALORANT.

“Good luck in CS2 brother,” professional VALORANT player Vladyslav “arch” Svistov wrote to pyth, adding fuel to rumors that the former NiP rifler is coming back to Counter-Strike.

Dot Esports has reached out to pyth but has received no response at this time.

Author
Image of Leonardo Biazzi
Leonardo Biazzi
Staff writer and CS:GO lead. Leonardo has been passionate about games since he was a kid and graduated in Journalism in 2018. Before Leonardo joined Dot Esports in 2019, he worked for Brazilian outlet Globo Esporte. Leonardo also worked for HLTV.org between 2020 and 2021 as a senior writer, until he returned to Dot Esports and became part of the staff team.