Hiko, perhaps the biggest star in the North American CS:GO squad Cloud9, chose to leave the team earlier this week.
Now he talks about the problems the team has been struggling with – problems that eventually caused him to give up and move on.
– We never were able to figure out what we needed to be that top team, he says in a Youtube clip.

The North American CS:GO community has been in a silly season frenzy during the past week, where players have been jumping back and forth between the top teams. Most noticeably, Spencer ”Hiko” Martin chose to leave the top team Cloud9 and was replaced by AWP star Shahzeb ”Shahzam” Khan.

”People knew my stance on everything”

Now the ex Cloud9-player gives his view on what caused him to leave the team. How he’s been discontent with the teams’ performance and requested changes.
– I expressed my uncomfortableness, and people knew my stance on everything for the entire time. I didn’t blindside them with this, they knew it was coming and that I wanted to make a change. Unfortunately it didn’t happen and I had to make a change. I didn’t do anything shady, it just happened the way it did, he says.

”Holes in our strategies”

The reason for him being uncomfortable was the player roles during games, which were constantly changing.
– Everyone was kind of uncomfortable because our roles were so weird. We had Sean being forced to AWP, and he didn’t even wanna play anymore if he had to AWP. We had this weird mix of me and Shroud as lurkers, and Semphis entry fragging. Sometimes Jordan wanted to lurk and sometimes be an entry fragger. It was a bunch of problems and holes in our strategies and defaults.

”Would never be a consistent top team”

Because of the problems, Cloud9 could never measure up with the top teams in the World, despite practicing in Europe for well over a month before DreamHack Winter.
– We were able to contend for a top spot and able to perform at individual events but when it came to being a consistent top team it would never happen. We were so random at times it would be hard for us to actually compete and stay consistent. Because everyone would change their stuff and we would keep it. In the beginning we had that x-factor, dark horse thing. We had a very scrimmy style, more on-the-fly stuff, catching people off guard. But then we switched and tried to work as a team and go toe to toe with people who had better executes and better strategies, people who are more comfortable with this stuff.

”Never able to figure it out”

He also mentions that teammate Shroud had similar views of the issues within the team.
– Shroud said that the main problem before and now has always been teamwork. Everyone’s on different pages. Everyone has things they’re good at but nobody is on the same page. We were never able to figure out what we needed to be that top team.