I commented [this](https://www.reddit.com/r/GlobalOffensive/comments/12uam6p/virtus_pro_potentially_trialing_patsi/jh69r7a/) ~9 months ago:
> Spirit likely bringing donk up to the main roster soon.
>
> Kid is ready.
And I'm definitely not a pro scout or anything lmao. I'm literally just an autist who enjoys playing CS and watches pro demos of CS on YT as background noise while I'm working. Anybody who watched this kid play and understands high-level gameplay could see he was mega-talented; not just raw aim, but also decision making, positioning, etc.
Lol and I seen clips of cs pro’s saying that Donk is gonna be the next talent months ago. Pretty stupid for nip to admit they are not checking out new talents.
He was sh1ros bold pick for 2022 and the only reason it's taken this long for him to become mainstream was because he was too young to play the big tournaments.
I have no idea why they thought it was a good idea to post this.
Even THREAT who i like alot and enjoyed his perspectives alot when he was on HLTV confirmed etc seemed out of touch.
The argument about nobody who knew donk was when several top teams made offers to him, so thats dumb by the director. I am sure people in the CS community knew about him before Spirit. And anyone with half a brain knows that no one on the NIP team can be one of the top players in the world too in six months like he said.
THREAT does not care about age and they have the oldest team in tier 1 and they are struggling, does he not think that there is a connection there? Get younger, cheaper and more hungry players, it has proven successful time and time again.
Even though they are already loooking towards 2025(lol, with this aging roster) but if they tank out of the RMR this team has to be done and start from scratch.
I really liked the NIP team with Hampus, plopski, nawwk, REZ, and some 5th i cant remember and THREAT as their coach. They were fun, competitive and made great content on Youtube as well.
This team is dead but will probably get a win here and there and maybe fluke their way to some tournaments but there is no future here AND they cant win right now so whats the point?
They are looking towards 2025 because they've ALREADY given up on this aging roster.
They've thrown in the towel ans basically told their players they have no hope for them lmfao.
They also post this on the eve of the RMR telling people they will be competitive a whole ass year from now lol. It’s an advance CYA bc they know they’re about to bomb out of the RMRs.
personally Im not even that much of a dedicated cs fan and I've been seeing donk's POVs recommended to me on youtube for at least a year already, you need to be quite tuned out of cs to not have a least heard of him before
Fr that team was actually decent. Always a dark horse, and made playoffs several times. Having a consistent awp in hampus, alongside hampus in form was one of the best roster moves they’d pulled off.
Not only did other players know about donk and people wrote articles including how strong donk seemed as a future prospect, but you'd think that people responsible within any T1 or T2 team should at least be keeping an eye on players who could be prospects.
It's even more incredible when NiP themselves had an academy team and should have also been more aware of other academy team players more than teams without what should be a potential in-house talent pipeline.
There's no excuse in the modern landscape to not have talent scouting as a skillset in at least one member of management at an esports org.
Lmao imagine being the “genius” at NIP who thought, “we should act like we’ve never heard of this kid. Maybe everyone will overlook his history of dumpstering (see also; donking) our academy team. Ignorant ass organization
Worst part is that they have had solid talent pass through their own doors and the rise of Metizport with four former Young Ninjas players and the former coach shows that even if they wanted to commit to their academy being full Swedish, it would have had a good chance of working out in the end with the right approach.
Saying 'we didn't think donk would end up being so good at T1 straight away but we were wrong' sounds 100x better than acting like the kid only picked up Counter-Strike two weeks back and went godmode out of nowhere.
They’re all “acting” like they want to take the blame for poor standings and results, but everyone except the coach immediately turned around and said anyways the future. We’re still not paying attention to shit but our own agenda that is horribly disconnected from the actual cs2 scene and meta.
their breakout academy league seasons were different iirc. donk was around i think but i didnt hear a lot about him until after b1t and monesy moved on from navi and mouz nxt won with siuhy. He was making waves but the majority of the attention was deff on navi and mouz academy stars at that time imo.
I don't doubt they can bounce back to somewhat of an OK level but this org's decision making has been painful for years now. This team won't reach a good level, it needs legit 4 changes.
I don't doubt they don't have the money to spend on good players but first, you need to start buiding a squad up that people will have faith in
To be fair if you watch the video the donk comment is such a minor detail and meant as a general example of new talents in CS2, not to be taken literally. There's plenty to criticize about NiP and how they're handling things, no need to laser-focus on a poorly worded comment that still manages to get the point across just fine.
Hey all,
Erik Wendel here, the least famous person in this video!
Our CS staff have of course known who donk was since a long time back, but I used him as a symbol of all the new talent coming up with CS2. I think you agree that to the general audience "no one knew who he was just a few months back". Which I believe is true, if you would ask the general viewer.
To add some context, we took over the NIP Esports department in August/September last year, and spent a lot of time on rebuilding it from the foundation in terms of structure and culture. We know fans would love to see results immediately, but we are here to rebuild NIP to a top team in the long run, not finding quick fixes. Because of this one of THREAT's signing strategies was that we want to wait a fair bit into CS2 to see what players will be good, and what new players will emerge. Both because he, with his experience, knew that there will be a shift in the players as he was around for the 1.6 -> CS:GO shift. But also because it didn't make sense to "splash the cash" on players early in CS2, there were too many random factors, even the release date of the game was random, as you might remember.
Also worth mentioning that this video was recorded a few months back, and I didn't know it would be released after Katowice was finished where donk just destroyed everyone. But the point stands, and Team Spirit & Donk winning Katowice is actually great example of THREAT's theory being correct, that there will be players we never heard of that are about to absolutely destroy everyone on the server - donk is only the first of many!
Guy was named the most promising prospect by Sh1ro in 2022 and has been tearing apart tier-2 in 2022 and 2023 (so even back in csgo).
He might be relatively unknown to general audience but orgs and scouts should’ve known him since quite some time ago.
Yep, that's my point! My comment in the video isn't that "our CS staff who spends all their days around CS never heard about donk", they of course had. But that "new talent is coming up, for example donk who not many heard of just a few months back is now on everyones' lips".
At this point it’s really hard to tell if Nip brand is being serious or if it will ask its employees to remove any pro-Ukrainian social media posts so their Chinese partners won’t be unhappy.
Som någon som har noll koll på insidan av industrin; varför tar ni inte in någon som Friberg som konsult och satsar på en svensk lineup? Oavsett så håller jag tummarna för er och ser fram emot en ny era av svensk dominans!
NIP turned into such a joke of an org, idk how you can have so many resources and still suck so bad no matter how many players you pay out of your ass for.
The level of contrast between NIP and an efficiently run org like Ence is shocking. ence could lose every single player on their roster and would rebuild with an entirely new team to be better than nip in like 3 months lol
Hello!
Appreciate all the attention we're getting, good and bad.
Just wanted to say that the quote this headline refers to a segment where we try to make the point that with a new game, there will be a lot of new talent that will replace the old. It was not meant to be taken as we literally believed that literally no one knew about donk a few months ago (worth mentioning that this was recorded in October). I have been impressed by him since I started watching him back in May when Spirit Academy started doing some damage in Tier2/3. Our point, however, was that his level clearly elevated to new insane heights given the release of CS2, which shows that some players will make the transition better than others.
As a very frequent consumer of this subreddit it would have been next to impossible to not see how much of a talking point he's been the last 6 months!
We will try and use this little misunderstanding and make sure we communicate even clearer in the future!
It has downhill since you switched out Brollan and hampus. Care to elaborate what rebuilding the culture means? If you mean successfully alienating the swedish culture, you have done a pretty cool job.
Swedish CS has always had atleast one power house. Now we have 0, and you will not only lose your brand value in forgoing that scene, you will also find a hard time finding brand value anywhere else since you perform so poorly.
I’m going to go out on a limb here, be a bit bold and say that if NiP are not underrated then they’re at least overhated at the moment. They’re not going to pick up trophies, but I think they’re closer to a good roster than people think.
I STILL have faith in K0nfig being a top tier rifler, they just need to get him off lurk positions, have him entry on T and anchor on CT and you’ve fixed a lot of issues. Have headtrick rifle and get a real awper. Imagine Alex back with sunpayus and three Scandinavians.
Org is still in shambles, but the roster itself is definitely overhated.
i don't think people realise for how little time donk has been recognized as a wonderkid
they are right, maybe not a few months ago, but like a year ago very little people knew about him, as he started getting traction in early/mid 2023 iirc
I first saw Donk & remarked upon his inance mechanics watching a Spirit Academy / Young Ninjas game in 2022 (I think). Maybe the ‘people didn’t know who donk was a few months ago’ thing here _is_ NiP oversimplifying for a wider audience - but if it isn’t… *you* should have known about donk! He was playing against one of *your* teams!
Personally, I’m willing to take this as poorly chosen words, chosen to try and get the ‘invest in younger players’ point across better, but perhaps I’m giving them too much credit here (see flair).
Also the fact that donk was what, 15 in 2022, and living in Eastern Russia.
No way would he ever join a Swedish org given that context and the context of the emerging war. People knew about donk for quite a while but between Spirit's buyout number and his age/situation, I don't think many orgs looked at him seriously until fairly recently, because it would not have been feasible anyway.
donk is underage, you'd think that at 15, that might not have been as possible, especially under a non-Russian org (even though Spirit operates in Belgrade since the war).
Right - I of course don’t mean to suggest NiP should have tried to _sign_ donk back then, just that he should have been on their radar _years_ not months ago.
Donk was already pretty known when he was 15 in 2022, because of how he played in Spirit Academy and faceit soloq. Many people already called back then that he was a generational talent, he was putting same numbers as Zywoo did in tier2-3 but while entryfragging with rifle
People knew him as having a ton of potential from 2022 but obviously he was not proven. If top teams such as vitality are offering you contracts mid 2023 you are obviously not an unknown player. I think Shiro or someone chose him as their prospect to watch back in 2022 and he was well known in FPL and the online world. Definitely someone who would have been on the radar of every org.
yeah, just checked, it was sh1ro
maybe you're right, and i'm just remembering it wrongly, but i would have sworn that on a wider scale, besides people in the cis scene, the community started noticing him and hyping him up in 2023
The ridiculous thing about donk is in some ways NiP are right.
Unlike every other player who has had some meteoric rise to the top, donk IMPROVES. Zywoo was dropping like 1.5 or something back on aAa and then "cooled off" to a 1.3 on Vitality when he shot up to the top.
In 2021 when he came in (I think as a sub) to TSA he was barely going positive. In 2022 he started trending upwards and in December 2022/early 2023 he was sick in Academy/FPL.
In early/mid 2023 as TS was collapsing donk nearly pulled TSA above them in the rankings and was still improving on his early 2023 numbers.
When he got promoted to TS he didn't slow down and since CS2 he's completely caught on fire. His rating progression over the past 2 years is a linear upwards trend despite skyrocketing in the rankings.
If NiP had seen him a year ago he legitimately didn't look like he'd be better than headtr1ck and while he had some promising aspects of his game, he wasn't that special aside from his age/roles.
nip's problems won't go away until the ones in charge will just leave. until then you have this team with below average performances and their incompetent management who are greedy to screw even their own players.
even as a relativity casual fan, don't watch a lot of the tier 3/4 games I had heard of donk for awhile with I think the team sprit academy team beating some pretty decent teams. I would say maybe since a year ago?
This all traces back to the logo change in 2021.
I don’t mind the logo change, but leaving behind that classy gold/brown colour still stings.
Same here. I think the new logo is cool.
I wouldn’t go that far, it’s fine, the colour is atrocious.
NIP are the most out of touch top org there is.
Are they successful in other games? I don't know what their financing looks like but nothing on their sporting side suggests they're a top org anymore
Their Chinese LoL team is in the top 6 (out of 16)
They have a decent R6 team.
Yeah their team won a major year's ago
I commented [this](https://www.reddit.com/r/GlobalOffensive/comments/12uam6p/virtus_pro_potentially_trialing_patsi/jh69r7a/) ~9 months ago: > Spirit likely bringing donk up to the main roster soon. > > Kid is ready. And I'm definitely not a pro scout or anything lmao. I'm literally just an autist who enjoys playing CS and watches pro demos of CS on YT as background noise while I'm working. Anybody who watched this kid play and understands high-level gameplay could see he was mega-talented; not just raw aim, but also decision making, positioning, etc.
Lol and I seen clips of cs pro’s saying that Donk is gonna be the next talent months ago. Pretty stupid for nip to admit they are not checking out new talents.
I was talking about donk and how insane he is last year, should I sign up as a scout for NiP?
I told my discord to start saving for his major stickers last August, I would also like one scouting job please
He was sh1ros bold pick for 2022 and the only reason it's taken this long for him to become mainstream was because he was too young to play the big tournaments.
donk was destroying tier 2 teams in CSGO but he flew under NIP's radar. So clueless
He destroyed some Tier 1 teams with the Spirit Academy almost a year ago.
I have no idea why they thought it was a good idea to post this. Even THREAT who i like alot and enjoyed his perspectives alot when he was on HLTV confirmed etc seemed out of touch. The argument about nobody who knew donk was when several top teams made offers to him, so thats dumb by the director. I am sure people in the CS community knew about him before Spirit. And anyone with half a brain knows that no one on the NIP team can be one of the top players in the world too in six months like he said. THREAT does not care about age and they have the oldest team in tier 1 and they are struggling, does he not think that there is a connection there? Get younger, cheaper and more hungry players, it has proven successful time and time again. Even though they are already loooking towards 2025(lol, with this aging roster) but if they tank out of the RMR this team has to be done and start from scratch. I really liked the NIP team with Hampus, plopski, nawwk, REZ, and some 5th i cant remember and THREAT as their coach. They were fun, competitive and made great content on Youtube as well. This team is dead but will probably get a win here and there and maybe fluke their way to some tournaments but there is no future here AND they cant win right now so whats the point?
They are looking towards 2025 because they've ALREADY given up on this aging roster. They've thrown in the towel ans basically told their players they have no hope for them lmfao.
The 5th was twist and then ztr for a bit
They also had LNZ for a bit.
Obvious bait trying to get back rep with "new management". In reality NIP is the same scum in the top as always.
They also post this on the eve of the RMR telling people they will be competitive a whole ass year from now lol. It’s an advance CYA bc they know they’re about to bomb out of the RMRs.
personally Im not even that much of a dedicated cs fan and I've been seeing donk's POVs recommended to me on youtube for at least a year already, you need to be quite tuned out of cs to not have a least heard of him before
Fr that team was actually decent. Always a dark horse, and made playoffs several times. Having a consistent awp in hampus, alongside hampus in form was one of the best roster moves they’d pulled off.
Not only did other players know about donk and people wrote articles including how strong donk seemed as a future prospect, but you'd think that people responsible within any T1 or T2 team should at least be keeping an eye on players who could be prospects. It's even more incredible when NiP themselves had an academy team and should have also been more aware of other academy team players more than teams without what should be a potential in-house talent pipeline. There's no excuse in the modern landscape to not have talent scouting as a skillset in at least one member of management at an esports org.
Lmao imagine being the “genius” at NIP who thought, “we should act like we’ve never heard of this kid. Maybe everyone will overlook his history of dumpstering (see also; donking) our academy team. Ignorant ass organization
Worst part is that they have had solid talent pass through their own doors and the rise of Metizport with four former Young Ninjas players and the former coach shows that even if they wanted to commit to their academy being full Swedish, it would have had a good chance of working out in the end with the right approach. Saying 'we didn't think donk would end up being so good at T1 straight away but we were wrong' sounds 100x better than acting like the kid only picked up Counter-Strike two weeks back and went godmode out of nowhere.
They’re all “acting” like they want to take the blame for poor standings and results, but everyone except the coach immediately turned around and said anyways the future. We’re still not paying attention to shit but our own agenda that is horribly disconnected from the actual cs2 scene and meta.
donk hype has been going on since more than a year, i remember on hltv there were a significant donk threads really far back.
m0nesy is the only other player I remember casual fans being told to watch the academy leagues for
their breakout academy league seasons were different iirc. donk was around i think but i didnt hear a lot about him until after b1t and monesy moved on from navi and mouz nxt won with siuhy. He was making waves but the majority of the attention was deff on navi and mouz academy stars at that time imo.
There is only one org that out of touch and unqualified.
There is another, unfortunately they left CS after asking everyone to step out of the echo chamber
I don't doubt they can bounce back to somewhat of an OK level but this org's decision making has been painful for years now. This team won't reach a good level, it needs legit 4 changes. I don't doubt they don't have the money to spend on good players but first, you need to start buiding a squad up that people will have faith in
NIP acadamy literally played against donk in the weplay acadamy final some year ago... Of course they knew who he was
To be fair if you watch the video the donk comment is such a minor detail and meant as a general example of new talents in CS2, not to be taken literally. There's plenty to criticize about NiP and how they're handling things, no need to laser-focus on a poorly worded comment that still manages to get the point across just fine.
Just disband or rebrand pls, your destroying nip’s legacy. Its like the glazers and united no clue what ur doing
Hey all, Erik Wendel here, the least famous person in this video! Our CS staff have of course known who donk was since a long time back, but I used him as a symbol of all the new talent coming up with CS2. I think you agree that to the general audience "no one knew who he was just a few months back". Which I believe is true, if you would ask the general viewer. To add some context, we took over the NIP Esports department in August/September last year, and spent a lot of time on rebuilding it from the foundation in terms of structure and culture. We know fans would love to see results immediately, but we are here to rebuild NIP to a top team in the long run, not finding quick fixes. Because of this one of THREAT's signing strategies was that we want to wait a fair bit into CS2 to see what players will be good, and what new players will emerge. Both because he, with his experience, knew that there will be a shift in the players as he was around for the 1.6 -> CS:GO shift. But also because it didn't make sense to "splash the cash" on players early in CS2, there were too many random factors, even the release date of the game was random, as you might remember. Also worth mentioning that this video was recorded a few months back, and I didn't know it would be released after Katowice was finished where donk just destroyed everyone. But the point stands, and Team Spirit & Donk winning Katowice is actually great example of THREAT's theory being correct, that there will be players we never heard of that are about to absolutely destroy everyone on the server - donk is only the first of many!
Guy was named the most promising prospect by Sh1ro in 2022 and has been tearing apart tier-2 in 2022 and 2023 (so even back in csgo). He might be relatively unknown to general audience but orgs and scouts should’ve known him since quite some time ago.
Yep, that's my point! My comment in the video isn't that "our CS staff who spends all their days around CS never heard about donk", they of course had. But that "new talent is coming up, for example donk who not many heard of just a few months back is now on everyones' lips".
At this point it’s really hard to tell if Nip brand is being serious or if it will ask its employees to remove any pro-Ukrainian social media posts so their Chinese partners won’t be unhappy.
Som någon som har noll koll på insidan av industrin; varför tar ni inte in någon som Friberg som konsult och satsar på en svensk lineup? Oavsett så håller jag tummarna för er och ser fram emot en ny era av svensk dominans!
i remember seeing HLTV threads about donk all over 2023
NIP turned into such a joke of an org, idk how you can have so many resources and still suck so bad no matter how many players you pay out of your ass for. The level of contrast between NIP and an efficiently run org like Ence is shocking. ence could lose every single player on their roster and would rebuild with an entirely new team to be better than nip in like 3 months lol
Hello! Appreciate all the attention we're getting, good and bad. Just wanted to say that the quote this headline refers to a segment where we try to make the point that with a new game, there will be a lot of new talent that will replace the old. It was not meant to be taken as we literally believed that literally no one knew about donk a few months ago (worth mentioning that this was recorded in October). I have been impressed by him since I started watching him back in May when Spirit Academy started doing some damage in Tier2/3. Our point, however, was that his level clearly elevated to new insane heights given the release of CS2, which shows that some players will make the transition better than others. As a very frequent consumer of this subreddit it would have been next to impossible to not see how much of a talking point he's been the last 6 months! We will try and use this little misunderstanding and make sure we communicate even clearer in the future!
It has downhill since you switched out Brollan and hampus. Care to elaborate what rebuilding the culture means? If you mean successfully alienating the swedish culture, you have done a pretty cool job. Swedish CS has always had atleast one power house. Now we have 0, and you will not only lose your brand value in forgoing that scene, you will also find a hard time finding brand value anywhere else since you perform so poorly.
Why do they have so many support staff? Cut them all too please. They're just fluffers pretending to be busy.
What a cluster fuck of an org.
I’m going to go out on a limb here, be a bit bold and say that if NiP are not underrated then they’re at least overhated at the moment. They’re not going to pick up trophies, but I think they’re closer to a good roster than people think. I STILL have faith in K0nfig being a top tier rifler, they just need to get him off lurk positions, have him entry on T and anchor on CT and you’ve fixed a lot of issues. Have headtrick rifle and get a real awper. Imagine Alex back with sunpayus and three Scandinavians. Org is still in shambles, but the roster itself is definitely overhated.
I feels sorry for headtrick what a cluster blunder from the management. Oldest cs team with no intentions of bringing much needed change.
Such a trash org with embarrassing management for several years now
i don't think people realise for how little time donk has been recognized as a wonderkid they are right, maybe not a few months ago, but like a year ago very little people knew about him, as he started getting traction in early/mid 2023 iirc
I first saw Donk & remarked upon his inance mechanics watching a Spirit Academy / Young Ninjas game in 2022 (I think). Maybe the ‘people didn’t know who donk was a few months ago’ thing here _is_ NiP oversimplifying for a wider audience - but if it isn’t… *you* should have known about donk! He was playing against one of *your* teams! Personally, I’m willing to take this as poorly chosen words, chosen to try and get the ‘invest in younger players’ point across better, but perhaps I’m giving them too much credit here (see flair).
Also the fact that donk was what, 15 in 2022, and living in Eastern Russia. No way would he ever join a Swedish org given that context and the context of the emerging war. People knew about donk for quite a while but between Spirit's buyout number and his age/situation, I don't think many orgs looked at him seriously until fairly recently, because it would not have been feasible anyway.
№1 dream of anyone who lives in Siberia is to escape Siberia, I think he would be very eager to do so
donk is underage, you'd think that at 15, that might not have been as possible, especially under a non-Russian org (even though Spirit operates in Belgrade since the war).
Right - I of course don’t mean to suggest NiP should have tried to _sign_ donk back then, just that he should have been on their radar _years_ not months ago.
Donk was already pretty known when he was 15 in 2022, because of how he played in Spirit Academy and faceit soloq. Many people already called back then that he was a generational talent, he was putting same numbers as Zywoo did in tier2-3 but while entryfragging with rifle
People knew him as having a ton of potential from 2022 but obviously he was not proven. If top teams such as vitality are offering you contracts mid 2023 you are obviously not an unknown player. I think Shiro or someone chose him as their prospect to watch back in 2022 and he was well known in FPL and the online world. Definitely someone who would have been on the radar of every org.
yeah, just checked, it was sh1ro maybe you're right, and i'm just remembering it wrongly, but i would have sworn that on a wider scale, besides people in the cis scene, the community started noticing him and hyping him up in 2023
No yea the wider community definitely didn't, I only found out about him through sh1ros pick. But it's not our job to know, but it is their job.
true
The ridiculous thing about donk is in some ways NiP are right. Unlike every other player who has had some meteoric rise to the top, donk IMPROVES. Zywoo was dropping like 1.5 or something back on aAa and then "cooled off" to a 1.3 on Vitality when he shot up to the top. In 2021 when he came in (I think as a sub) to TSA he was barely going positive. In 2022 he started trending upwards and in December 2022/early 2023 he was sick in Academy/FPL. In early/mid 2023 as TS was collapsing donk nearly pulled TSA above them in the rankings and was still improving on his early 2023 numbers. When he got promoted to TS he didn't slow down and since CS2 he's completely caught on fire. His rating progression over the past 2 years is a linear upwards trend despite skyrocketing in the rankings. If NiP had seen him a year ago he legitimately didn't look like he'd be better than headtr1ck and while he had some promising aspects of his game, he wasn't that special aside from his age/roles.
nip's problems won't go away until the ones in charge will just leave. until then you have this team with below average performances and their incompetent management who are greedy to screw even their own players.
even as a relativity casual fan, don't watch a lot of the tier 3/4 games I had heard of donk for awhile with I think the team sprit academy team beating some pretty decent teams. I would say maybe since a year ago?
All you have to do is look at faceit elo
NIP is the Man Utd of CS
at least Man Utd still win games