Autimatic Retires From CS:GO, Joins T1 Valorant

North American CS:GO star Timothy “autimatic” Ta has announced his retirement from the game after T1 revealed that the player would be joining its Valorant division. It is currently unknown who autimatic will be replacing on T1’s roster, seeing that with his addition the organization currently has six players on its roster.

The decision comes as quite a shock considering autimatic himself stated that he’d be looking to stay in CS:GO just a couple of months ago.

A lasting legacy

After a fairly lackluster 2020, which saw autimatic playing in the North American regional scene with Gen.G for the most part, the player was allowed to look for other opportunities.

Gen.G started the previous year on a high note, winning DreamHack Open Anaheim 2020, but slowly regressed as tournament play switch to an online format. The poor show of form culminated in the team bombing out of Flashpoint Season 2, after which the whole roster was placed on the transfer list.

Although the player was rumored to be building a team together with Robin “⁠flusha⁠” Rönnquist and Miikka “⁠suNny⁠” Kemppi, the plan ultimately fell through.

Flusha himself confirmed the rumors, stating that: “We had five players interested and willing to do this if we had an organisation that could make it happen, but I think that in this state of CS:GO, organisations are really hesitant to either buy a lot of players and maybe let their team go if they have one, or just buy into CS:GO.”

In the end, autimatic leaves an undeniably strong legacy in the North American CS:GO scene. Considered both a capable AWPer and rifler, he most notably competed with TSM and compLexity Gaming, but will always remain best known as a member of Cloud 9’s squad that went on to win the ELEAGUE Boston Major back in 2018.

Foray into Valorant

Autimatic continues the trend of North American CS:GO players looking for greener pastures in Valorant. The player will be reunited with former Cloud 9 teammate Tyler “Skadoodle” Latham on T1’s roster.

It is currently unknown who autimatic will be replacing in T1’s starting lineup, or if the team will opt for a six-man roster as previously seen with Team Heretics. Rumors have surfaced that he will be replacing Keven “AZK” Larivière, but the organization still hasn’t made an official announcement in that regard.

T1 themselves have underperformed after a strong start that saw the team finish as the runners up at T1 x Nerd Street Gamers Showdown in June last year. Although the team did feature in the First Strike Regional Finals, they were swiftly eliminated by the eventual champions 100 Thieves.

Considering he has no prior competitive Valorant experience, autimatic will have his trial by fire in the upcoming Valorant Champions Tour.