Team Vitality’s shox departs after 2 years with the team

French Counter-Strike: Global Offensive player Richard “shox” Papillon is leaving Team Vitality after two years, the team announced Wednesday on Twitter. This comes after reports that shox was in talks to join Team Liquid, moving to a North American organization. A veteran of the Counter-Strike scene, he will be moving to a different team for 2022.

You have been part of the creation of our legend, we have shared so many good moments since 2019, a chapter is closing but your name will remain engraved in the Vitality history 💛

Thank you @shoxCSGO and good luck in your next adventure #VforVictory pic.twitter.com/n2IRnkbEap

— Team Vitality 🐝 (@TeamVitality) December 22, 2021

As a competitive Counter-Strike player since 2006, shox has played for a multitude of big esports organizations. This includes VeryGames in Counter-Strike: Source, Team EnVyUs (Now Team Envy) and G2 Esports in CS:GO. His first major victory was the Electronic Sports World Cup in 2011 for CSS. As his career went on in both Source and Global Offensive, he won DreamHack Winter 2014, DreamHack Masters Malmö 2017, EPICENTER 2019 and, more recently, the Winter season of IEM Season XVI. He is one of five players to attend all CS:GO major championships.

Shock’s time with Team Vitality, in particular, has led to major success. Both his EPICENTER and IEM wins were with Team Vitality. In recent international battles, they’ve fought tough matches against top teams such as Ninjas in Pyjamas and Natus Vincere.

Shox’s future in CS:GO

As reported by 1pv, shox has been in talks to leave Team Vitality’s CS:GO team in order to join Team Liquid. If this is true, this would mark shox’s return to an NA organization after six years — when he played for Team Envy. Along with Nicholas “nitr0” Cannella reportedly moving back to CS:GO from VALORANT, to join Team Liquid, Team Liquid are retooling their roster for 2022. Now, it’s only a matter of time to see whether this deal works out for these two players, or if they will be continuing their careers elsewhere.