Denis “Seized” Kostin has stepped down from Natus Vincere‘s active Counter-Strike roster and will be replaced by Aleksey “1uke” Zimin from Spirit Academy for upcoming ESL Pro League matches against North and GODSENT, according to a post Tuesday on VK.com, a Russian social media site.
Seized was previously set to depart from the team in July, as he was expected to leave Na’Vi along with Ladislav “GuardiaN” Kovács. But in a stunning turn of events, seized remained on the team when Danylo “Zeus” Teslenko decided to return to the team a few weeks later.
Na’Vi has struggled since Zeus’ return, though, which has included group stage exits at ESL One New York and the ELEAGUE CS:GO Premier. Perhaps most surprisingly, Na’Vi was defeated by Vega Squadron in the finals for the EPICENTER CIS closed qualifier and failed to earn wild card spot for EPICENTER next week.
Seized has been a part of Na’Vi since 2013, had two Major second place finishes at MLG Columbus 2016 and DreamHack Open Cluj-Napoca 2015. The rest of the Na’Vi roster consists of Zeus, Ioann “Edward” Sukhariev, Egor “flamie” Vasilyev, and Oleksandr “s1mple” Kostyliev.