SicK announced retirement from CS:GO in favour of VALORANT

Hunter "SicK" Mims announced he is retiring from competitive CS:GO play and will instead turn his attention to Riot Games' upcoming tactical first-person shooter VALORANT.

In his announcement Tweet, SicK revealed that he has decided to end his five-year-long career as a CS:GO pro, which in his mind was an inevitable move for him as he believes the game has become very "stale and tedious" and that he simply did not enjoy playing it anymore. VALORANT, however, came at a "perfect time" for him to switch over and focus on launching a career in another esports title.

"After 5 years and almost 800 official maps played, I’m taking a step back from competitive CS:GO," said SicK.

"The game has become incredibly stale and tedious for me. Valorant comes at a perfect time but it was inevitable anyway. I’ve spent my entire adult life in this game, it’s been fun."

The 21-year-old was first spotted in a competitive CS:GO play in December 2014, when he competed at MLG Aspen Invitational – NA Qualifier 1 under stack dubbed SYOPS. In March 2015, he joined Mortality eSports and later played for Casaless, Trifecta Gaming, Denial eSports and in December 2015 teamed up with compLexity as a backup player.

Since joining compLexity, SicK rose to prominence as a promising CS:GO player and later further solidified himself as one of the best young talents in the scene. In 2016, SicK joined Team SoloMid and later played for Misfits, Rogue and in March 2019 re-joined Complexity. During his stay at Misfits, Rogue and Complexity, SicK secured a number of impressive placements in some of the biggest CS:GO tournaments, including a third-place finish at Esports Championship Series Season 1 – Finals and ESL Pro League Season 6 – Finals, as well as silver medals from Americas Minor Championship – Boston 2018, DreamHack Open Austin 2018 and Americas Minor Championship – London 2018. During his career, SicK also took part in the Major Main Qualifier for ELEAGUE Boston, FACEIT London and StarLadder Berlin, finishing all three tournaments at a 12-14th place.

Sick and Russel "Twistzz" Van Dulken were once regarded as the hottest prospects from the "next generation" of North American CS:GO players, but while Twistzz continued to improve and later joined Team Liquid, SicK seemingly cooled off, which eventually led to him more or less disappearing from the highest-tier of CS:GO competition.

Since SicK got benched from Complexity's main roster in September 2019, he made a handful appearance as a stand-in for several teams, before he got picked up by Chaos Esports Club in March 2020, where he made his one last appearance at FLASHPOINT Season 1. Although Chaos started their FLASHPOINT venture strong, with a win against MiBR (2-0)  and Gen.G (2-0), the North American team dropped the ball in the second phase, where they lost to MAD Lions (0-2) and FunPlus Phoenix (1-2). In the playoffs, Chaos continued with their underwhelming performances and lost to HAVU (0-2) and later got swept by Orgless (0-2), thus ended the tournament at a seventh-eighth place.

During FLASHPOINT, SicK averaged 1.00 rating across 16 maps, which is lower than his average from the last three months (1.10) and a far cry from his best days while he played under Misfits, Rogue and TSM, where he averaged 1.10, 1.11 and 1.06 rating across all competitions.

SicK is only one of many CS:GO pros who decided to leave the scene and pursue their career in Riot Games' new tactical first-person shooter VALORANT. Among all others, it was Braxton "swag" Pierce, who announced his departure from CS:GO earlier on February. He has since renamed himself to "Brax" and already signed a contract with T1 roster, where he will play alongside his former CS:GO teammate Keven "AZK" Larivière.