As surprising as it may sound, one of the best players in the history of Counter-Strike has just made the move to join a non-contender team in BC.Game Esports. The player in question: Aleksandr “s1mple” Kostyliev. You read that right. The consensus CS greatest of all time suddenly moves to join a team from the unknown and shocks the rest of the community with his decision.

Joining a Tier 3 team is definitely not in everyone’s cards for s1mple’s career. After all, he has led Natus Vincere to a total of 13 S-Tier tournament wins in seven years, including a massive finish at the PGL Major Stockholm 2021 and an Intel Grand Slam that same year. On top of all that, he has established his status as one of the top players in the history of Counter-Strike with all his feats.

It can be remembered that he was inactive for nearly two years, stepping away from the game while it was still in Global Offensive, and the transition proved that he was not recently interested in coming up with a run at that time. In the switch to CS2, the Ukrainian star played briefly before eventually coming back to the game in 2024.

S1mple in the New Squad

S1mple referenced Harry Potter elf character Dobby’s line from both the films and the books, saying “Dobby is free” in regards to his exit from NAVI. While he doesn’t actually have any grudge against his former team, it does seem that there are a lot of talks as to how he could have just staged another comeback with them, but then it’s definitely for the best as the star himself says.

“Dobby is free. I just want to play, BC.Game gave me the chance, and they’re serious about building a top-tier team. Let’s see what moves we make and how I can impact things. Maybe some things will change, maybe not–only results will show,” said s1mple.

However, moving back to a Tier 3 team is not the optimal move. But s1mple wanted to point out joining BC.Game is definitely a good move for him as it humbles himself and puts him on a different standard to rebuilding his career once more. On top of that, he does not want to waste time in being benched – which could be a potential move for any inactive player coming back to play.

With BC.Game, s1mple starts in the squad right away, replacing AWPer Tim “nawwk” Jonasson, who was benched by the squad in late June. He will be joined by Nemanja “nexa” Isaković, Luca “pr1metapz” Voigt, and Aleksandar “CacaNito” Kjulukoski. The squad is also expected to make more transactions in the coming weeks to improve around s1mple.

Bye Bye NAVI

Following the Austin Major, Natus Vincere actually revealed in a press release that they received a lot of offers for s1mple. All of those were sent into the star’s way for his consideration. Eventually, the Ukrainian star considered joining BC.Game at the end of the day.

“We are incredibly grateful to Oleksandr for the journey we traveled together, for the numerous trophies, unforgettable emotions and highlights! We say goodbye for now, but we’ll be waiting to see you back on the server. GOAT!” said NAVI in its statement.

Now that s1mple is wearing new threads, it is easy to expect that he will be gunning for a lot of wins to begin his career with the team – starting with the ESL Challenger League Season 50: Europe - Cup #1 this coming August 11th.