Oleksandr “s1mple” Kostyliev may be considered the best Counter-Strike player in the world these days, but his former Team Liquid teammate Eric “adreN” Hoag claims he wasn’t always the dedicated professional he is today.
Now the star player of Ukrainian team Natus Vincere, s1mple previously plied his trade with Team Liquid until mid 2016, when he made the move to Na’Vi.
s1mple was the only Ukrainian on an otherwise all North American line-up, but spent the better part of seven months with Liquid, although the team struggled to find success.
On stream, adreN was told by viewers that s1mple had said in his Reddit AMA that he didn’t practice, to which adreN responded by saying it was in fact s1mple that failed to work with the team. He even suggested that s1mple “cried and left servers mid-practice.”
After seeing the clip, s1mple then responded. It is unclear if he did actually make a comment directed at adreN initially during the AMA, or if adreN’s viewers were simply baiting him into speaking about s1mple.
Responding to the clip above from adreN’s stream, s1mple doubles down however, saying “[adreN] didn’t practice well” and is surprised that he said “bad words” about him.
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However he does also admit to not wanting to watch demo’s, which is perhaps part of the complaint adreN was alluding to.
Whatever their differences, it is unlikely the two will ever play on the same team again, unless some very strange circumstances were to arise, so it shouldn’t matter too much going forward.
And s1mple has certainly come along way in only two years, now playing with fellow Ukrainian’s, as well as Russian stars flamie and electronic, on Na’Vi, his team are fighting to be one of the best in the world with s1mple already on top of the individual rankings.
Clearly not watching all those demos hasn’t impacted his game too much in the long run.