crashies departs NRG as free agent

NRG Esports NRG Esports North America Rank #1 FiNESSE Pujan Mehta s0m Sam Oh Verno Andrew Maust mada Adam Pampuch Ethan Ethan Arnold has announced the release of longtime player Austin "crashies" Roberts, who will be allowed to explore other options in VCT as a free agent.

crashies has been with NRG since the beginning of the 2023 season. He joined the organization following a successful 2022 season with OpTic Gaming OpTic Gaming Inactive that saw the team lift the Masters Reykjavik trophy. When OpTic disbanded following the 2022 season, crashies would join NRG with a slew of familiar faces. The organization picked up head coach Chet , FiNESSE , and Victor .

Chet and Victor parted ways with NRG following the 2024 season.

With crashies on the roster, NRG has achieved a second-placed finish at the 2023 Americas League and a fourth-place finish at Masters Tokyo.

crashies was one of the core members of Envy Envy Inactive Marved Jimmy Nguyen Victor Victor Wong crashies Austin Roberts FiNESSE Pujan Mehta yay Jaccob Whiteaker when it merged with OpTic at the end of the 2021 season. With them, he achieved a second-placed finish at Masters Berlin.

Prior to Envy, OpTic and NRG, crashies also spent time with T1 T1 Korea Rank #2 stax Kim Gu-taek (김구택) Meteor Kim Tae-oh (김태오) Sylvan Go Young-sup (고영섭) BuZz Yu Byeong-cheol (유병철) iZu Ham Woo-ju (함우주) .

"As my contract is expiring this year, NRG is allowing me to explore my options as an unrestricted F/A going into the 2025 season," crashies said. He will find himself on a different roster from the OpTic/NRG core for the first time since 2020.

NRG Esports NRG Esports North America Rank #1 FiNESSE Pujan Mehta s0m Sam Oh Verno Andrew Maust mada Adam Pampuch Ethan Ethan Arnold 's roster is now:

Pujan "FiNESSE" Mehta
Sam "s0m" Oh
Ethan "Ethan" Arnold
Max "Demon1" Mazanov
Zachary "Ry" Parr (Manager)
Tanishq "Tanizhq" Sabharwal (Assistant coach)

I just think as an org right now I would overall value crashies lower than eeiu or Verno. Of course he has a lot of experience, which can be very valuable for certain teams, and he has shown insane peaks during his time with Optic, and there is some hope that he could return to that form.

But honestly, with how every single Optic player has looked in VCT in the partnership era, I'm not sure just how much hope that could be. Maybe it was just a case of worked great as a team, but the individuals just are not world class outside of that system.

Crashies hasn't shown world class performances in two years. There were some flashes, but that's just not good enough, especially since the one thing you typically expect from experienced veterans is consistency.

Eeiu has had one year in tier 1 and at least in my opinion has been a top 5 initiator in his region. Both he and Verno have clear upwards trajectories, and just don't have that baggage of two mediocre years in the current VCT system.

Of course crashies, across his career, has been the better player, but many players looked like the best in the world once and are now mediocre at best (cned, zeek, yay, marved, all of navi, etc). With how this year has been going, I'm taking promising tier 2 talent any day of the week.