Canadian in-game leader Damian “daps” Steele will leave Gen.G’s CS:GO roster in the near future, daps and Gen.G announced today.
The 27-year-old, however, will keep playing for Gen.G until the organization finds a new fifth player. Daps has been playing for Gen.G since December 2019 when Gen.G bought him, autimatic, and Kenneth “koosta” Suen from Cloud9. The org completed its roster later that month with Sam “s0m” Oh from Envy and Hansel “BnTeT” Ferdinand from TYLOO.
Although Gen.G have one of the best North American teams, they haven’t evolved enough to beat the likes of Evil Geniuses, Team Liquid, and FURIA on a consistent basis. Daps has led the team to one championship so far, which was at DreamHack Open Anaheim in March 2020.
Daps said he’s been thinking about stepping down for about three to four months, but the CS:GO Major, which was scheduled for November but was canceled this week due to the coronavirus pandemic, prevented him from leaving early. The team has a “lot of issues,” including daps himself, the Canadian said.
“There had been some in and out of game changes I wanted over the past six months that I thought would of made the team better but were not agreed upon by all,” daps said.
The captain said the combination of the team’s issues, the current landscape of CS:GO (no LAN tournaments), the “burnout for playing the same teams 24/7,” and not scheduling boot camps has prevented him from being the best leader he could be.
Daps thinks this move will benefit everyone involved. “I can potentially find something I believe in again and they will do better if they can find an IGL that has faith in the project that I once had,” daps said.
Daps wants to keep playing CS:GO, ideally as an in-game leader, but could end up transitioning into just a player or leaving the CS:GO scene. North America recently lost two of its best in-game leaders when nitr0 and Josh “steel” Nissan left Liquid and Chaos, respectively, to start a pro career in VALORANT with 100 Thieves.
Gen.G may have a tough time finding an in-game leader to replace daps, at least a North American one.
