Team Vitality parts ways with shox

After months of speculation, Team Vitality officially parted ways with the French CS:GO veteran Richard “shox” Papillon today. Shox departs for his “next adventure” after over two years wearing the black-and-yellow of Vitality.

The team bid him farewell in a goodbye on Twitter, thanking him for the moments he helped create since Vitality’s inception and stating that his “name will remain engraved in the Vitality history.” In his last few events with Vitality, he helped the team reach the PGL Stockholm Major playoffs, finish third at the BLAST Premier World Final, and win IEM Winter with a 3-0 sweep over NiP in the grand finals.

Both Vitality and shox have been included in reports of a massive incoming roster shuffle. A report from 1pv in November said Vitality was looking to bring in the former Astralis trio of Peter “dupreeh” Rasmussen, Emil “Magisk” Reif, and coach Danny “⁠zonic⁠” Sørensen. The report stated that shox, Jayson “⁠Kyojin⁠” Nguyen, and coach Rémy “⁠XTQZZZ⁠” Quoniam would depart Vitality, and the organization has already announced the departure of coach XTQZZZ.

Shox has been linked to a potential move to Team Liquid, along with the reportedly returning Nicholas “nitr0” Cannella and Extra Salt AWPer Joshua “oSee” Ohm. They would join Jonathan “EliGE” Jablonowski and the recently re-signed Keith “NAF” Markovic. Liquid just recently moved Gabriel “FalleN” Toledo, Jake “Stewie2K” Yip, and Michael “Grim” Wince to the bench.

Shox has well over a decade of experience in Counter-Strike, and has spent the past few years playing for some of the French CS juggernauts in Envy, Titan, G2, Vitality, and LDLC, the latter of which he won a Major with at DreamHack Winter 2014. His potential move to Liquid would be his first international project and his first alongside all-North American talent.