gla1ve Puts An End To Speculations, Signs 3-Year Deal With Astralis

Just a few days ago, the future looked uncertain for Astralis and its roster. The team’s coach, zonic, was rumored to want to leave the team. The IGL, gla1ve, had said during the recent IEM Cologne that the crew had little hope of dominating the professional scene without a proper AWP player. And everyone’s contract, except Bubzkji, was set to expire in just 5 months. But now that gla1ve has announced that he’s staying for at least 3 more years at the club, the situation is starting to clarify.

What gla1ve’s New Contract Means

The current Astralis roster, with the exception of Bubzkji, has been playing together since February 2018. In esports, when a crew stays together for that long, it usually means one thing: they’ve been incredibly successful. And indeed, until last year, Astralis was a seemingly unbeatable team. But then the ongoing global crisis began and the performance dropped significantly. The whole thing culminated with dev1ce being sold to NiP.

gla1ve’s (or possibly Astralis’) decision to prolong the contract suggests that the whole roster is likely to do the same. The only two potential exceptions are zonic and Bubzkji. zonic because he’s done the same thing for the past 6 years and might be exhausted. And Bubzkji because there’s no one else to replace in order to bring in a world-class AWP player who can do the job as well as dev1ce used to when he was in shape.

Apart from gla1ve’s new contract, nothing has been announced yet. But you can feel it coming. In the next weeks or months, one by one, the current Astralis players are likely to prolong their contracts with the Danish club. I expect this process to be made up of sequential stages, because with each player there’s a different deal being negotiated.

 

Photo credit: IEM|Bart-Oerbekke