Pyth retires from CS:GO, moves to VALORANT
Jacob "pyth" Mourujärvi retired from the competitive CS:GO scene in order to pursue a career in VALORANT, the Swedish CS:GO pro announced this Thursday.
Pyth announced his retirement in a Twitlonger post, where he declared his nine-year-long CS:GO career has come to an end. In the announcement, the Swede talked about how during the past three years, since he left Ninjas in Pyjamas, he felt like he was unable to get back to the level he once was on while claiming that he struggled to find a place where he felt like he "belonged in and it has been hard to find the right groove with different projects."
"I have learned so much from all the mistakes but also taken with me the good stuff," pyth added.
"Moving forward, I have found a new spark in the new game Valorant which I'm addicted to, this is a fresh start for me and I enjoy it very much and grind at least 12 hours a day with the goal to become one of the best players in the best team.
"Every day I come in with a new mindset to improve and I wanna learn every little "trick" to be the best version of myself, I'm taking me with all my CS knowledge but I'm also learning new stuff in the game which makes it so much fun, also meeting new people from all other games around the world is fun, I got to meet so much new people that are awesome coming from games like Overwatch, Apex, Fortnite etc!"
The 26-year-old Swede has made his first appearance in the professional CS scene in September 2010, when he attended Gamingplace LAN and finished ninth-12th while playing with a stack named Laidback. In late 2012, pyth made his first appearance in the CS:GO scene at DreamHack Winter 2012 – Swedish Qualifier with Team Decerto, but failed to make much noise, since his team crashed out of the competition in round one after losing to stack BuggIT, which fielded Simon "twist" Eliasson.
Throughout 2013, pyth placed for several smaller teams including Absolute Legends, Team X, Publiclir.se, Five Crowns and n!faculty. In October 2013 pyth joined SK Gaming where he pocketed a top-four finish at FACEIT Cup October 2013 and bronze medal at MSI Beat IT 2013 before continuing his career with the likes of AliGon, FlipSid3 Tactics, unWanted, Team Orbit and GreyFaceNoSpace.
In April 2015, pyth got signed by Luminosity Gaming, and helped his team finish third at ESL ESEA Pro League Season 1 – North America, which remains one of the biggest achievement of his career. His best years as a CS:GO pro, however, came while playing under Ninjas in Pyjamas in December 2015 – May 2017. With Ninjas in Pyjamas, pyth secured a top-eight finish at Esports Championship Series Season 1 – Finals and ELEAGUE Season 1, finished top-four at ESL Pro League Season 3 – Finals, second at DreamHack Open Summer 2016, and won DreamHack Masters Malmö 2016 and Intel Extreme Masters XI – Oakland. He later played for Dreamchasers and reached the finals of Copenhagen Games 2017 and in November 2017 reached the finals of WESG 2017 Europe Finals with GODSENT.
The WESG 2017 Europe Finals silver medal, however, was his last notable achievement in his professional CS:GO career. Since leaving NiP, pyth played for Envoy, Digital Chaos, PAPERPLANES; Vexed Gaming, The Final Tribe and most recently Lilmix.
Since the turn of the year, pyth failed to see much success in his competitive endeavours, outside of third-place finish at Fragleague Season 3. His most recent appearance in a competitive scene came at ESEA Season 33: Advanced Division – Europe, where Lilmix finished 34th, which earned them a spot at the ESEA Season 34: Advanced Division – Europe.
Although pyth failed to see much success in the competitive CS:GO landscape in recent years, he should have no issues transitioning to VALORANT, since he has a plethora of experience competing at the highest level of Valve's tactical FPS title. As it stands now, pyth is without a VALORANT team, however, he stated that further announcement about his career will come in the upcoming weeks, hinting he already has a job opening waiting for him.
