Astralis announced the signing of Nicolai “HUNDEN” Petersen today, and the CS:GO community isn’t fond of this decision.
Many people started to denounce the move on social media. A lot of fans, as well as some popular personalities and journalists from the scene, voiced their concern over this move. Moreover, a large amount of them is claiming that Astralis is damaging its reputation as an organization with such signing.
“Absolutely shameless,” wrote DonHaci, one of the most well-known CS:GO personalities on Twitter.
“Absolutely laughable. The irony and lack of self-awareness has to be at an absolute all-time high for esports with this move,” added Liam Slevin, Dust2.us’ senior writer. Some Astralis fans already announced their lack of support for the organization in the future. “I don’t like Astralis anymore,” and “from one of the best organizations to ever touch esports, to appointing controversial, cheating and scandalous people in the org. What a pity,” are just some of the many opinions found on social media.
Other people express their feeling through memes, like HLTV’s Marco Rizzo’s “disgusted but not surprised image,” or Chad “SPUNJ” Burchill’s “Surprised Pikachu,” meme, which is often used as a sarcastic reaction image.
A lot of people voice the same argument as to why they think this is wrong: it’s morally inappropriate. HUNDEN has a history of wrongdoing in Counter-Strike.
He was one of the 37 coaches ESIC suspended for abusing the coach spectator bug in 2020. His ban was reduced to eight months, and after sitting it out, he rejoined Heroic in April 2021. Although, when he once again tied himself to the organization, he leaked its CS:GO team’s confidential information to another team, reportedly Astralis. This resulted in another ban for HUNDEN, which was yet again cut short by ESIC, and lifted on Dec. 2, 2022.
