Gonzo Awards: Worst Decision Of The Year

Esports is populated by incompetent narcissists which is a combination that will always bring plenty of drama and hilarious downfalls. This year was of course no different.

Previous Winners

🥇 2010: ESL UK

🥇 2011: CS:GO Beta Key Distribution

🥇 2012: Absolute Legends Ghosting

🥇 2013: Alexey ‘Solo’ Berezin of Team Rox.Kis Match Fixing

🥇 2014: “I’ll just boost you up there” – Fnatic

🥇 2015: Leigh “Deman” Smith Leaves League

🥇 2016: PEA Enters The Fray

And the winner is… Astralis’s obsession with Hunden

Astralis have acquired a reputation for being both ruthless and duplicitous not without reason. They have pushed lie after lie on to the community going all the way back to their inception where they famously claimed they were a player owned organisation despite the players holding a tiny piece of equity between them. Down the years they have continually lost their standing in the eyes of the Counter-Strike community as the negative headlines led to negative performances. Despite this they have always maintained that their perception in Denmark is all that matters… Which begs the question why they would throw their lot in with someone whose name has become synonymous with cheating in Counter-Strike.

The lengths that Astralis went to in order to work with Nicolai "HUNDEN" Petersen put Ennis and Jack to shame. Despite being the team that Petersen had used the coaching bug against they offered him a job after he returned from his ban. During that time, as we know from the Hunden Files release on this website, former Astralis Director of Sport Kasper Hvidt continually utilised Petersen not just for expertise but also recruitment of players. Before he was even officially announced as a coach they had managed to contrive a way to work with him via employing him through a subsidiary in the form of Pixel.tv something they insisted wasn’t “clandestine” despite it being kept from the public by everyone involved. Then when he was officially announced they had their players publicly praise the move even going so far as their in-game leader Lukas “gla1ve” Rossander saying he’d never had a “more competent” coach and analyst team behind him despite the four years he spent with the most decorated coach in the game. A truly sickening way to shit on their own history and proof, if any were needed, that once Astralis are done with you they’ll write you out of their history books no matter what you did for them.

Behind the scenes the hire had caused Heroic to file a lawsuit and when the details of that were made public it prompted an ESL investigation. Ahead of their findings Astralis were left with little choice but to terminate the contract not only of Petersen but also of Kasper Hvidt and were then hit with a $100,000 fine for conflict of interest. During his tenure as “Head Analyst” for that is surely what he was doing Astralis didn’t achieve a single meaningful result at any of the tournaments they participated in.

So, in summary, to hire one formerly convicted cheater they dragged their own name through the mud, denigrated their own legacy, angered the community, got hit with a lawsuit, had to remove their celebrity Director, earned a $100,000 fine, didn’t improve in results at all, blew up the roster he helped assemble and then “parted ways” with him after only six months. Like, esports is an insane industry on its best day but the series of decisions made here are like almost nothing I’ve ever seen before. Staggeringly poor judgment and a level of arrogance only overshadowed by the startling incompetence for start to finish.