Gen.G Esports announce new CSGO roster, featuring former C9 core

Gen.G Esports are breaking into the Counter-Strike scene with a new North American roster, and have announced the first three players in Timothy ‘autimatic’ Ta, Damian ‘daps’ Steele, and Kenneth ‘koosta’ Suen. All three players depart from the Cloud9 organization.

One chapter closes while another begins in the story of North American CSGO. Gen.G has officially acquired the autimatic/daps/koosta trio from Cloud9, and confirmed on Twitter that the two remaining additions will be added in the coming weeks. This confirms reports from weeks ago that Gen.G were interested in the C9 core.

Gen.G billed their new additions as a ‘veteran core’ and have already set a daunting long-term goal of bring home another major to North America. The Gen.G roster will compete in a top-heavy NA scene currently dominated by Team Liquid and Evil Geniuses.

Only a couple of years have passed since Cloud9 were at the top of the CSGO world, not just the North American region. In January of 2018, Cloud9 claimed the first and only major for a North American team, on home soil at the ELEAGUE Boston major. 

Within half a year, the bulk of that roster moved on. Stewie2K and tarik both left for SK Gaming/MIBR before each finding a respective spot with Liquid and NRG/EG. Skadoodle retired. Only RUSH and autimatic remained until this past July, when RUSH was moved to the bench before moving on to Complexity.

• Read more: Complexity complete their rebuilt “juggernaut” CSGO roster

Now, autimatic moves on from C9, the last member of the Boston roster, after a 3+ year stint with the flagship organization. In the video announcement, the organization made special mention of thanking Timothy for his extensive service.

In that same announcement, Cloud9 coach James “JamezIRL’ Macaulay revealed that both autimatic and daps asked to be moved off of Cloud9, and were thus transferred to Gen.G. There was no mention of whether or not koosta asked to be transferred.

Coach Macaulay said this transfer gives the C9 organization an “opportunity to build a team from new, “ indicating that C9 does very much intend to remain in the competitive CSGO scene.

Gen.G is a relatively new esports organization when compared to Cloud 9, having formed in 2017 as a collaboration between Silicon Valley investors and Seoul, Korea. They compete in the League of Legends’ LCK and in the Overwatch League as Seoul Dynasty. Their PUBG team most recently won the PUBG Global Championship.

There are no strangers to first-person shooters and North American rosters, having fielded a Call of Duty Black Ops 4 team this past year that finished second in the CWL Pro League playoffs. Most of that roster has gone onto various franchised teams in the upcoming Call of Duty League.

Dexerto will keep you updated when the remainder of the Gen.G CSGO roster is announced, as well as what Cloud9’s plans for CSGO are.