UKTerrorist

SK-Gaming Lose Swedish CS Lineup

Posted by Myers at 13:35 1/1/2005.

The SK-Gaming's Swedish Counter-Strike division have decided not to extend their contracts with the organisation. The contracts connecting the six players to the world's most prominent multi-gaming clan expired on the 31st December 2004 and thus leaves the players as "free agents."

Following SK-Gaming's decision not to send the CS team to the CPL Winter World Championships the majority knew that something major was going to happen with a team that has unparalleled success over the past two and a half years, including the CPL 2003 grand slam. Swedish website Gamingeye, which broke the story, also managed to capture an interview with the world's most famous gamer, HeatoN. This interview has been translated into english by ESLive.com.

Hi. Tonight, we could reveal that SK.swe were not extending their contract with with SK and are leaving the clan starting effective immediately. Many have had speculations whether it was about you didn't get to go to the CPL. What do you have to say about this?

HeatoN - Partly, it's because of that, but the truth is that we didn't get to go to the CPL because we chose not to extend our contract. But it was so to say the drop that made the cup spill and we decided to go a 100% forward.

Is this a thing that will affect the entire team? There has been speculations concerning Hypers contract hasn't expired yet.

HeatoN - Yes, the whole team has left, even Hyper. There were certain parts in his contract that didn't went down too good with SK.

So you're standing as clanless everybody today. Will you be stick together or will you be splitting up?

HeatoN - No we are not clanless, where we are going will although not become official before the next couple of days. And yes, of course the team we'll stick together.

Feel free to read the full translated interview. SK-Gaming's Counter-Strike team were the crown jewel of the organisation, and despite SK-Gaming achieving considerable success in other games such as Warcraft 3 it has been the CS team that piloted the way. It is still unknown where the team will go, a revival of the NiP tag is unlikely considering the lack of finances such a brand has. We are far more likely to see the complete lineup at an already established organisation.

Other questions still remain though. Will bds go with the CS team and abandon and SK-Gaming brand that he helped build thoughout the past two and half years? Or will he stick and rebuild SK-Gaming? No doubt a major announcement will be made within the next few days, stay tuned.

In related news, SK-Gaming today announced that their head main sponsor in 2005 will be ATi.

Starting January 1 2005, ATI, leading developer for graphic boards partners up with SK Gaming. ATI will equip the whole SK team with the latest in graphic technologies to increase the performance of all players.

"We are looking forward to this partnership and will try to get the best possible performance out of our hardware to increase our results for 2005" says Andreas Thorstensson, Managing Director of SK Gaming.

A lot of new possibilities will indeed arise from this new partnership. Our fans may look forward to 2005, and especially the upcoming CeBIT event in Hannover will bring some action never seen before in eSports. ATI will be the Head Main Sponsor for SK Gaming in 2005.

Interesting days for SK-Gaming.