S1mple won’t return for the BLAST Premier: World Final

BLAST Premier: World Final will be played between December 13-17 and will represent the last $1 million Counter-Strike event of 2023. It’s a Major in everything but name. It has just eight participants. One of them will be Natus Vincere.

Na’Vi has had a bit of bad luck in recent months. After the release of CS2, the team’s best player, s1mple, decided to take a break. He was unhappy with the new game and hinted that he’ll be back in 3-6 months. We assume that January or February 2024 is going to be the earliest we’ll see him competing again.

Until then, the Ukrainian organization will need to do what it can to win without him. So far, it’s not been fun for them to compete with an improvised roster. At IEM Sydney, Na’Vi finished 9^th – 12^th. Now, at BLAST Premier Fall Final, they lost the first match against Cloud9 and will likely get eliminated quite early in the tournament.

1-2 loss against @Cloud9 at BLAST

They played well GGs to them!

We are gonna fix some mistakes tonight and go again tomorrow vs @NIP

Time to regroup #navination 👌🏻🫡

— NAVI flashie (@flashiecsgo) November 22, 2023

BLAST Premier World Final features only the best of the best. The list includes Team Vitality, FaZe Clan, MOUZ, G2 Esports, and ENCE. Against such opposition, the odds of winning without a very powerful and cohesive roster are next to zero.

After the signing of w0nderful, Na’Vi has gone into extensive training to achieve fluency with their new roster. That takes time, especially because the new player is very young and probably needs a lot of time to adapt.

We know what happened when m0NESY joined G2 Esports. He needed almost a year to fully learn their system and get consistently good results. And he is probably the best player of his generation. In w0nderful’s case, at best he and the rest of the team will be ready to fight against the world’s best competitors in March next year.

What is s1mple doing?

Nobody knows what s1mple is doing these days. He’s clearly streaming and enjoying Counter-Strike 2 from the side. But we don’t know what else he’s taking part in. Is he still training with Na’Vi? Is he partying? What’s his life like these days?

For most players, an extended lack of competition leads to a severe decrease in ability. But for people like s1mple and device, it’s probably not that big of an issue. Device came back after one year of absence and he’s just as good as before. S1mple should be able to do the same. But when?

Header: Natus Vincere