Austin Major is about to begin, featuring 32 top-tier teams from around the world. However, there’s one name missing from the participants list — a name that will forever be associated with the word “greatness.” Today, the CS.MONEY Blog dives into why Astralis isn’t playing at Austin Major and how the Danish club ended up here.
New tournament stickers are already in the game! They look awesome, so it’s the perfect time to buy a cool skin to apply them to. Where’s the best place to buy skins? Of course, at CS.MONEY, where you’ll find low prices, a huge selection, and a convenient interface!
Why isn’t Astralis playing at Austin Major?
The short answer: the team didn’t qualify. Astralis fell just short of making the Major, losing the deciding match to B8. But behind this failure lie years of questionable management decisions, scandals, and problems. After all, this isn’t the first Major the club has missed. The last time we saw Astralis stickers in capsules was at the PGL Major Antwerp, which was three years ago. So let’s break it down.
The end of the golden era
Astralis had the greatest five-man lineup in CS:GO history. The golden roster of Magisk — dev1ce — gla1ve — xyp9x — dupreeh was untouchable. When the pandemic hit, this squad was the reigning champion from Berlin Major, but after the global shutdown, a prolonged decline began. They say that crises don’t create trends; they just accelerate them. And we can remember that even during the golden era, there were scandals inside the club — like the infamous “BLASTralis” period, when the organization prioritized its own business interests over competing against the best.
It felt like the team’s greatness came at too high a cost because the management didn’t treat the players carefully enough. In the pandemic era, cracks between the players and the club grew. Players wanted to take a break, management was against it, and the team had to bring in a sixth and even a seventh player as stopgaps. Those half-measures didn’t work, and eventually dev1ce left, followed by half the roster moving to Team Vitality.
Results at any cost and by any means
Once Astralis’s golden era ended, the club’s management went to desperate lengths. It’s hard to imagine a year when there wasn’t some kind of scandal around Astralis. Heroic suffered the most from behind-the-scenes intrigues, as Astralis’s management was obsessed with proving they were Denmark’s best club.
Astralis recruited HUNDEN after he was banned for abusing the coaching bug. Later, HUNDEN received another ban for leaking Heroic’s data to Astralis while he was still their coach. Player poaching, the emergency CadiaN substitution scandal — even incidents like k0nfig’s nightclub fight somehow ended up tied to Astralis.
And now there are rumors that Astralis is looking for a new owner because the club is close to bankruptcy. Most likely, the brand won’t be allowed to die, but it’s clear the club needs a reset. By the way, when players announce retirement, their stickers typically don’t skyrocket in price, so buying them now only makes sense for the memories — and only if you’re a true fan. Ultimately, the decision is yours alone.
Astralis: what went wrong?
Any club can get lucky once and find a star line-up that brings huge success. But truly great clubs build systems that work. NAVI, after s1mple’s departure, managed to win a Major with a European roster. Heroic repeatedly sells players at a profit but still manages to build a lineup that qualifies for Majors. Team Spirit didn’t just discover and integrate donk; they’re grooming more top talent, and their lineups are also world champions in Dota 2.
Instead of simply and honestly working on themselves, building on the success and improving day by day, Astralis got involved in other distractions. That’s why the golden fish swam away after the pandemic — and the club was left high and dry.
