French CS:GO legend-turned-streamer kennyS has weighed in on the passive AWPing style that took over Valve’s FPS meta in the past few years.
Dedicated AWPers such as JW, GuardiaN, and kennyS himself were known back in the day for their relentless aggression and flashy plays with the AWP, CS:GO‘s sniping rifle that can kill opponents with just a body shot. The old meta consisted of having an aggressive sniper that could get opening frags for his side.
Nowadays, however, there are just a few aggressive AWPers left as most S-tier teams utilize their dedicated snipers as passive players that can support the squad during executes while being well-positioned to kill the enemies. This playstyle most notably started to get traction once Nicolai “dev1ce” Reedtz helped Astralis to win all sorts of championships, including three Majors, in 2018 and 2019.
In an interview with Jaxon, kennyS gave his thoughts on AWP players slowing down.
“As you can expect, this is not the dream Counter-Strike,” kennyS said in an interview with Jaxon. “In all honesty, I’ve been pretty far from it. But from what I see, I see that AWPers are not performing as well. Stats performances are not related to AWPing as much as it was before. I think it’s mostly down to the meta. The meta changed a lot. And that’s for the best.”
While kennyS seems content that the AWP playstyle has radically changed since his time as a top player, he expects someone to eventually bring back the aggression so many fans know and love from AWP players.
“At some point, we might have a different AWP in the future. When I arrived, I brought my aggressive playstyle. That was a real revolution,” kennyS said. “But at the end of the day, someone else will do the same with a different playstyle. And that’s why change is really good. You get diversity.”
KennyS has been inactive from competitive CS:GO since G2 moved him to the bench in March 2021. The DreamHack Open Cluj-Napoca Major 2015 winner has since then been linked to a transition to professional VALORANT a few times, but it never came to fruition.
