Cloud9 — $6.500.000 for a team that achieved NOTHING

sometimes Rich dudes come into CS go thinking I have so much money that I'll just buy the best players give them a crazy salary and they'll win every tournament it's kind of sad and kind of funny at the same time usually these people who have no idea about CS go whatsoever end up just signing some tier 3 roster who have no real future and then leave in half a year with no results but the biggest Financial failure in CS go was actually made by Cloud9 they paid 2 million dollars for a team how did it happen that an organization so experienced could sign a roster that wouldn't win a single tournament and then would disband in a few short months don't forget to leave a like And subscribe because you're watching cybershoke and today we'll tell you how Cloud9 made the most expensive mistake in the history of competitive CS go so in order to fully understand this story we need to know what was going on in the mind of the man who paid for all of this so meet Jack Etienne the founder and CEO of Cloud9 although that 2 million roster was signed at the end of 2020. this actually all started in Boston way back in January 2018. their Cloud9 made one of the brightest home ones in CS go and became world champions single shot Guardian Waits patiently as Cloud mine sets the push up oh this happens they may clown are your healing major champions it seemed like winning a major would only strengthen the bonds between the players but in reality things went the other way some players on the team felt a lot of discomfort and jacketen himself stated that quote there was already a huge Cloud get it over the future of the team so Cloud9 fell apart Stewie who had just signed a three-year contract decided to accept an offer from mibr wanting to see what it's like to play with Fallen then Tarik talked the C9 management into buying out his friend FNS from complexity they spent two hundred thousand dollars on this but had to kick FNS after just two months American players were replaced by Europeans stiko flusha kiyoshima and golden played for Cloud9 at that time Jack continued to actively invest in his project but during each of those times when it looked like everything was hunky-dory something bad happened for instance golden who was an essential part of the team had to leave due to some health issues and flush a tilted right there on the major after his mother passed away then Cloud9 formed their roster around dapps and Jack was pretty satisfied with the guys but unfortunately a conflict came up the players demanded full control over the coach and analyst and Etienne just couldn't agree with that so he sold this roster to Genji and bought South African team ATK the guys showed some decent Cs and Jack was excited about what they could achieve in a couple of years but then the pandemic hit Etienne had to not only solve all the financial problems but also ensure the health and safety for his staff who are all living together in one big house mainly it was players and coaches it was obvious that if the virus got into the gaming house it would be fatal for the organization and no one wanted that to happen so every resident of Cloud9 gaming house signed a simple but strict contract no walking outside and no unauthorized guests then Etienne got a message from Henry Greer a well-known Esports Caster whose voice were sure you can recognize Here We Go Dinos Nation [Applause] all of a sudden it flipped around once again two versus one the world's best player up against it to stay in the game they'll go for the fake interviews by Nico yes he can we're going on over time oh my God Greer full of Ambitions was looking for a job and Jack was happy to hire him as a manager here's what Henry proposed to Etienne due to the specifics of the North American Market it's much easier to monetize U.S based teams so why wait a whole year or two for their roster to climb up to the tier one level when we could just sell them at a high price and then sign some experienced European team instead Etienne liked this idea so much that he even hired kasad to help Henry gather a team also two things gave Cloud9 a big Advantage firstly their South African roster was playing great so their cost was pretty high secondly the Rio major got canceled and there were a lot of free players on the market it all seemed like a great deal what could possibly go wrong well one day Cloud9 CS go players with the full knowledge that their actions could possibly endanger a lot of people let an outsider into the gaming house but Etienne forgave them after a long conversation but unfortunately the guys didn't learn their lesson after a while they let an outsider walk right into their gaming house again this time Jack felt like he needed to do something yeah Henry's plan sounded great but Etienne knew that if he let this go unpunished the next time these guys would go and contaminate the whole gaming house and essentially kill Cloud9 the Cs go roster was evicted and put into another living space Jack also decided to bench them all and because of this the overall cost of the team dropped from the moment that Cloud9 won the major in Boston etn invested more and more money into building new rosters but failed every time because of some random setbacks but the fact that the European market was full of free players gave Jack a bit of Hope and so he having a lot of faith in Henry decided to go all out and spend as much money as he needed to in order to build the ideal team Jack made a huge bet on Henry's experience here's what he said additionally as Cloud9 has grown my ability to spend a lot of time with each one of these teams to really watch these teams and make sure they're growing the way they should gets harder and harder the ability to bring on someone like Henry who brings all of this experience can really ease that pressure from me and I can put that trust in someone who has good experience Henry is very driven to make a high performing team and there is a lot of risk for his reputation for him to go out there and say that he's going to build a great team so I know he's going to work extremely hard to protect that it's a good motivation for him to make sure that he delivers but Henry had an unusual vision of managing an Esports team he wanted to not only gather the best roster but do it in a way that everyone would be speaking about them also Henry was a big hater of closed contracts so he announced right away that the details of his agreements with the players would be public Alex was the first signed player he was surely the best option from all the free igls on the market with him Vitality reached the playoffs at 11 big lands in a row the amount to that deal was 1.65 million dollars that's the total number of Alex's buyout and his salary for the next three years Etienne remembers that cloud9's top managers were having a hard time understanding this deal Jack also received a call from the CEO of another organization the guy was upset about Cloud9 revealing the cost of the players because now every player in the world would be asking for a higher salary for Etienne it was just a confirmation that Henry and him were doing everything right Henry also made a lot of noise on social media for example he stated that Cloud9 players wouldn't have the obligation to stream it was a reference to all organizations in the world that obliged their players to be active on Twitch also he gave the new Cloud9 roster a nickname and promoted it a lot he called his team the Colossus the Colossus is a strong word by itself but it was also a big taunt to complexity you see Jason Lake an owner of complexity was a big figure in Esports everyone loved this guy because he built a big organization Blake is highly respected because he's not just another entrepreneur with investors cash but a normal guy like everyone else who loves Esports in time the community started a call complexity the Juggernaut the dictionary says that a juggernaut is a massive inexorable Force campaign movement or object that crushes whatever is in its path so it was all a big compliment to complexity and Jason Lake himself so when Henry started to call Cloud9 the Colossus and promote this nickname in every one of his tweets it was obvious that he was using this to taunt complexity it's up to you to decide the moral aspect of this but if Henry wanted to advertise the new Cloud9 team as much as possible then we must admit he did a good job at it 10 days later on September 19 2020 Cloud9 revealed the names of two more players Messi and woxic Messi was a good rifler with a promising future and woxic well he was a superstar at that time the Turkish Opera was in good shape and could easily compete with any Tier 1 sniper that being said the amount of money Cloud9 announced had r already surpassed three million dollars Cloud9 became a money bag for European orgs Etienne remembers I could tell you when I go buy out a player all of a sudden the buyouts double all the owners get like dollar signs in their eyes and start rubbing their hands because they know Jack's coming to pay for me that does suck a bit because players would go like yeah my buyout is probably going to be about like 100k and then I come knocking and it's always like nothing less than 500k Jack this is the cost and this is the price and I'm like that's not what I'm hearing two or three other teams are getting a bit smaller offers well that's the cloud nine price I'm like okay with the signing of the two remaining players that three million dollar cost we mentioned before had doubled and the craziest thing is that Cloud9 didn't sign some best of the best Superstars no the new Cloud9 players were floppy and S Dog the roster was fully assembled on October 25th 2020 and they were preparing for their first tournament that was due in just two weeks it was the flash point with a huge one million dollar prize pool pretty ironic but Etienne actually had to pay for a spot there there was huge hype around Cloud9 for two months they teased the community with big announcements and now it was finally time to see how the most expensive team in CS go history would actually play but there was absolutely nothing out of the ordinary they lost a VP in OG with zero to two scores and just like that Cloud9 got eliminated fans kept their faith in Cloud9 and the team itself didn't get upset after all it had only been their very first tournament together but although that team was pretty strong and well balanced it was a stretch to call it the Colossus by that time a superstar team had to include players like simple glaive Nico or cold Zera not s dog metsy or floppy don't get us wrong those guys are good but not s tier level good two weeks later Cloud9 played at the blast tournament there they beat nip and complexity but failed to win a game against Mouse and not long after that they lost two more times Cloud9 took eighth place on the dreamhack winter and then lost to Fours in the semi-final of an online tournament and then after just two months cassad the coach decided to leave the team the community was left with a lot of questions um guys your project is colossal right why make changes after just a couple of small failures later Henry explained that kassad and Alex had completely different views on Counter-Strike and just couldn't work together but we wonder why that hadn't been noticed or taken into account before they signed on Alex that's the question with no answer the next tournament hadn't even started yet before Cloud9 made one more roster move they benched walksick the most powerful player on the team in the statement they said that the time zones between turkey and North America are so different that it had been impossible to work with woxic but again how did they not think that through from the start this question too has no answer Zappa came to fill woxic's shoes and even though cloud9's results were objectively bad they still signed a big and loud contract for three years the best achievements of that team are fifth place at CS Summit and snow sweet snow later on March 26 2021 Cloud9 posted a short announcement there they said that building a team in covid times was way harder than they thought and that they're going to temporarily be leaving CS go the players went their own ways and Cloud9 returned to Counter-Strike after one year signing the Gambit roster it's up to you what to think of Cloud9 here some people believe it's all just a case of bad luck and that they actually had a chance to change CS go While others think it was just a big waste of money but here's the final fact that Cloud9 team including three-year salaries cost Etienne 6 million dollars and it didn't net him a single win in any tournament so it is objectively the biggest Financial failure in the history of competitive CS go a good thing is that the current Cloud9 roster is looking pretty damn strong hey if you like this kind of video where we tell some CS go stories please let us know in the comments and we'll make more and of course don't forget to leave a like And subscribe because you are watching cybershoke bye for now foreign

Channel: CYBERSHOKE — CS2 servers

Views: 64,060

Keywords: cybershoke, cybershock, csgo servers, cybershoke.net, csgo, cs:go, csgo channel, counter-strike, cloud9, c9 csgo

Id: cpNVqpO7PrA

Length: 13min 17sec (797 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 31 2023