It's been on the horizon. A top-class player of the #eSports scene has announced his withdrawal from Russia. Team Spirit will leave its headquarters in Moscow and set up camp in Serbia. The reasons are obvious.
The Russia-Ukraine war has brought many changes and restrictions that cannot be circumvented even by the open eSports teams. If Team Spirit Clan wants to continue to be in the top of the world and in the major offline tournaments, this cannot be done from Moscow.
The squad from Team Spirit
Team Spirit has been successful in the past years mainly from a Dota 2 and its CS:GO Counter Strike lineup. If you look at the squad of the teams, you will quickly realize that Team Spirit is mainly Russian and Ukrainian professionals.
A concentrated professional work from Moscow is no longer possible. Also in the employee area, the clan has predominantly relied on employees of the two nationalities. For the whole team a move is now announced. The professionals will of course go with them to Belgrade. To what extent the rest of the structure will also go with them or whether there will be a rebuild in the Balkans is something Team Spirit should leave up to its employees.
The statement of the eSport clan
The decision to change the location was certainly not easy for Team Spirit. The clan had built a perfect infrastructure in the Russian capital, which now has to be closed.
The official statement of the team management reads:
“Current events force us to abandon our plans to expand the infrastructure in Moscow and focus on relocating our club's staff and team to Belgrade. … Esports has never known borders and has never been bound to one point on the map. The accessibility of eSports has always been its unique feature.
Wherever you live, whatever you do, whatever you believe in, the doors to eSports have always been open to you. But everything changes, and one of those changes is the current situation between Russia and Ukraine, where many of our players and staff come from. Given the practical and ethical circumstances, the decision to move seems like the only right one.”
Immediate criticism of the statement
By the way, the criticism of the statement of the clan leadership in the social media was not long in coming. Many “moralizers” immediately criticized the fact that the word “war” was avoided in the statement. However, Team Spirit has once again taken a clear stance on this. “We are not afraid to use the word war. We have used it in our statements in the past and we will not take it back,” the team countered.
Info about the eSports clan
By the way, Team Spirit has been around since 2015. It was founded in Moscow and is now led by Nikita “Cheshir” Chukalin. The clan currently has the following teams in the competitions:
- Counter Strike Global Offensive
- Dota 2
- League of Legends
- Hearthstone
The biggest success of the team was winning “The International 2021”. The partners of the eSports organization include Nike, Red Bull, Parimatch, HyperX and Bitget. In the forecast, we assume that the “Russians” will continue their path of success in Belgrade in the coming months and years.
