CS:GO fans are convinced Astralis should have dropped one player instead of Xyp9x

Astralis confirmed earlier today that academy player Alexander “Altekz” Givskov will take Xyp9x’s place on the main team for the time being and the four-time CS:GO Major champion will play with the youngsters. Even though Xyp9x is one of the lowest-rated players on Astralis in 2023, some fans feel star rifler blameF should be the one removed despite his high-fragging capability.

The arguments mostly revolve around blameF’s playstyle. He’s Astralis’ second-highest-rated player on the season with a 1.21 rating, according to HLTV. But for fans on Reddit, this comes at the expense of him baiting the rest of the team. BlameF is a lurker and part of this role is to work separately from the rest of the squad in some rounds, meaning he doesn’t go first or is there to trade his teammates as much as fans want.

“BlameF is not the star player they need, he is too passive as their ‘star player,’ the amount of times he does not go in to trade his teammates in their matches is ridiculous when he has his level of mechanics, they need a guy who can get them into sites,” one fan said. “The core problem of Astralis is blameF, his stat padding blinds people who focus on the K-D chart,” another fan said.

BlameF has been a part of Astralis since he joined alongside k0nfig in November 2021 after their stints with Complexity. Although he has been putting up numbers from day one and helping gla1ve with calling—blameF calls on Mirage, for example—he hasn’t been able to help Astralis reach anywhere close to their form in 2017, 2018, and 2019. Astralis haven’t won any tier-one tournaments since 2020 and recently failed to qualify for the BLAST Paris Major in May.

Contrary to blameF, Xyp9x has played supportive roles for most of his career and isn’t expected to frag as much. For some fans on Reddit, Astralis will struggle because they don’t see either Christian “Buzz” Andersen or Altekz filling in for Xyp9x.

Altekz will make his debut with blameF, dev1ce, gla1ve, and Buzz next week at the online event Brazy Party, which kicks off on April 27. Astralis will then get to see if he’s ready for tier-one and how he integrates into the main squad.