CSGO veteran steel quitting to become full-time Valorant streamer

Longtime CSGO pro Joshua “steel” Nissan will be retiring from CS:GO to pursue a career in professional Valorant.

Update 8/31:

Chaos Esports has officially parted ways with steel via Twitter, who they say is stepping away from professional CS:GO to stream Valorant full time.

“Coming off of our recent success, Josh “steel” Nissan will be transitioning to streaming full-time as a content creator focused on Valorant within the organization,” Chaos wrote. “In his time with us Josh has helped build something special with our CS:GO roster, and we want to honor his wishes to let him take time to figure out what is next for him in his competitive career.”

The org promised fans they would have an announcement on September 1 regarding his replacement on the team. There was some speculation about where steel could be headed to play Valorant professionally, but it seems he’s sticking with Chaos for the time being.

Original story continues below:

Steel has been active as a pro player since 2009, playing for teams like Dignitas, Ghost, and Chaos – his current home at the time of writing this article.

In 2015, he received a ban from Valve-sponsored events for his involvement in the North American match-fixing scandal, along with his teammates on iBuyPower at the time.

According to Jarek “Dekay” Lewis of DBLTAP “multiple sources with knowledge of his decision” have confirmed that steel is set to retire from professional CS:GO and Chaos to go pro in Valorant.

The report goes on to claim that Mexican pro Edgar “MarKE” Maldonado will be brought in to take steel’s place on Chaos once he retires, but doesn’t specify when we could see the move take place.

Steel joined Chaos in November 2019, after returning to CS:GO in 2017 after he was unbanned from ESL events following the fallout from the match-fixing scandal.

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The British-Canadian has led Chaos some pretty decent results recently, helping them to a semifinals berth in ESL One: Cologne North America, and a first-place finish in Season 34 of ESEA Premier North America earlier in 2020.

Besides not knowing the exact details on when steel could be making his departure, we also don’t know which team’s roster he’ll be joining. Possible candidates could be 100 Thieves, who don’t have a full roster yet, or Dignitas, who have an open fifth spot and were one of steel’s past orgs in CS:GO.

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In any case, the veteran has certainly been playing more Valorant on his Twitch stream than CS:GO as of late. Whether the reports will pan out remains to be seen, but there seems like a good chance steel could be joining a good number of his fellow pros in making the jump to Riot’s hot new FPS.