Leaked emails suggest that RFRSH and Astralis’ relationship broke down before the split

World-renowned Counter-Strike team Astralis revealed two days ago that they’re separating from RFRSH Entertainment, the team’s parent company. And now, leaked emails acquired by Dexerto show that Astralis’ players have been wanting to split from RFRSH for some time due to criticism directed toward the team and their decision to skip multiple big-name tournaments for RFRSH-hosted events.

“We must also recognize that the promise we gave two years ago—to, after a build-up phase, separate ownership of competition and team—is about ripe,” the email reads. “The Astralis players have, as you all know, felt this on their social media streams and I have no doubt that it has affected them since Miami.”

The email said that this decision to split came after the entire team extended all of their contracts until 2021. There were also details in the email that revealed that RFRSH was planning to develop its own CS:GO league, although not much else was said about that topic.

Here’s the email in full:

“Dear colleagues,

Yesterday we extended the contracts through 2021 with the five Astralis players and coach Danny. Thank you Nick, Kasper and Jakob for leading these negotiations during an exhausting five months, and Leo for being a sanity stop gap on the commercial terms. We can all be proud to have created a world-class team with a truly unique infrastructure around it!

As part of these signatures, we are also committing to separating Astralis and BLAST further. As we look to 2020 and the possible development of a league, we must also recognize that the promise we gave two years ago—to, after a build-up phase, separate ownership of competition and team—is about ripe. The Astralis players have, as you all know, felt this on their social media streams and I have no doubt that it has affected them since Miami.

This, of course, will over time mean a larger separation of roles internally, as discussed at standups and town halls in the past months. The BLAST and Teams product/performance teams are already fully separated, but we will during the next months be taking steps to make other roles clearer and dedicated to either BLAST or the teams. No decisions have been taken and we will be working with those of you holding dual roles in after the vacations to make this a seamless exercise.

Furthermore, this also means that we have started the first conversations with interested investors to acquire the majority shareholding of Astralis currently held by those also involved in BLAST, thus completing our committed separation at a shareholder level as well

Steen and I will also start addressing this commitment actively in the media, initially in the endemic landscape, hopefully, at least for a while, putting the trolls to rest.

We have created something very special in esports across BLAST, Astralis and Origen, and we should be proud of this ahead of the separation—and the parallel—futures that each of these businesses will see.

Feel free to reach out to me directly if you have any questions. Good luck to all those in LA.

Best, Nikolaj”

The future is wide open now for Astralis. They’ve dropped down to third place in the HLTV world rankings behind Team Liquid and Vitality. With a bit more time, the Danish powerhouse could return to form and begin another dominant run through the CS:GO scene.