Denial Esports returns to CS:GO by signing the Bravado Gaming squad

The youngsters of Bravado Gaming have moved over to Denial Esports, an organization who’s making its return to CS:GO esports.

The South African quartet of Aran “Sonic” Groesbeek, Ruan “ELUSIVE” Van Wyk, Johnny “JT” Theodosiou, Rhys “Fadey” Armstrong signed with Denial this week without their captain Dimitri “Detrony” Hadjuipaschali. Detrony will stay with Bravado, awaiting the organization’s next international venture in CS:GO, and the team will be looking for a new fifth. The squad of four will be joined by their coach Tiaan “TC” Coertzen on Denial as well.

At the same time, Bravado’s “Project Destiny” is coming to an end, which was an initiative to help the original South African squad reach the professional level in North America. The Project was recently nearing sudden closure due to a lack of funding, and an Indiegogo campaign was set up by Bravado to further fund the team through to the end of their run in the IEM Katowice Major.

The community rallied behind the players and organization to help keep the team afloat financially, putting up about 60 percent of the $30,000 goal to support the players. Players such as MIBR’s Gabriel “FalleN” Toledo, Team Vitality’s Dan “apEX” Madesclaire, and compLexity Gaming’s Sam “s0m” Oh hosted charity streams to assist in the Indiegogo funding.

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After the team was eliminated from the Major at the Americas Minor, however, Bravado announced that it ended the campaign and that all money donated will be reimbursed, hinting that the team would be transitioning to a new organization. Everyone who donated to the Indiegogo will receive their money back by the end of the week.

“We want to make it clear that this decision was purely on the players to cancel the campaign and accept the offer they received from Denial Esports,” Bravado said earlier today. “We want you to know that this is no reflection on the ethics of the Bravado brand and it’s management. We want to ensure that everybody who contributed to the campaign will be refunded. Bravado was disappointed by this outcome but we stand tall and proud in achieving its goal of taking a South African team off the African continent and placing them on a current global ranking of number 21 in the world [on HLTV].”

This also marks Denial’s return to Counter-Strike since it left in late 2017. In the past, the organization allegedly owed players tens of thousands of dollars in other esports titles such as Overwatch, Super Smash Bros: Melee, Halo, H1Z1, and Paladins. Denial has since come under new management, who reportedly paid off previous debt.