Cloud9’s sniper superstar Dmitriy “sh1ro” Sokolov has chosen to step down from the team’s Counter-Strike 2 roster effective immediately and has been made available for transfer, the org announced today.
Sh1r0 has willingly chosen to leave the team just one event into C9’s CS2 run, following the team’s group stage elimination at the hands of Complexity at IEM Sydney. C9 only recently brought in Ilya “Perfecto” Zalutskiy and Denis “electroNic” Sharipov this past July to retool the roster.
The news of sh1ro’s decision has sent shockwaves across a competitive CS2 community that’s already reeling from the report less than an hour prior that Natus Vincere is reportedly bringing in Ihor “w0nderful” Zhdanov to replace the team’s foundational AWPer Oleksandr “s1mple” Kostyljev. Following the report, s1mple put out a statement confirming he’s taking time off but said he’s openly considering switching to a new organization and even a new role away from AWPing.
Sh1ro has played with the same core of players for over four years, dating back to 2019 when the team played under the Gambit Youngsters banner. By the start of 2020, the team was brought up to main roster status within the Gambit organization and was one of the top teams of 2021, earning several big trophies and reaching the semifinals of the PGL Stockholm Major. The core joined Cloud9 in 2022, in the wake of sanctions on Russia that effectively forced the players out of Gambit, but never followed up with the same amount of success on C9.
Sh1ro’s departure from C9 is the latest installment in what’s been a very busy transfer window around the launch of CS2, with multiple teams making big changes and several big names considering or agreeing to substantial moves.
C9 will have to find at least a temporary sub very quickly with a match at the Thunderpick World Championship against Fnatic scheduled for less than 24 hours from now on Oct. 27.
