While our CS Main team now travels to the RMR to show the world what they're capable of, I have some exciting news to fans of Swedish CS! 🇸🇪 With the help of our ever faithful partner Red Bull Sweden I'm happy to tell you more about [SWE] CS Summit that we'll host in less than two weeks. Looking back a bit more than 1 year ago, we were a group of Swedes at NIP with the urge to do something to help Swedish CS. NIP is a Swedish CS org, from Sweden, with a lot of Swedes behind the scenes. That urge lead to many ideas, you've seen some of them like the recent announcement of f0rest coming back. Getting these legends closer to today's CS is a core part of nurturing the Swedish CS scene. Now, we can finally tell you about another one of these ideas, which is to gather many of Sweden's CS legends and stakeholders under one roof, the [SWE] CS Summit. To share experiences, mistakes, and learnings. To look each other in the eyes and have very honest and open discussions on how we can work better together. To be part of panels, watch inspiring guest lecturer and attend workshops. To make us all better, to make Swedish CS better. While NIP and Red Bull Sweden are hosting this, it's very important to note that NIP is just one of many teams, profiles and stakeholders there. When we sent out the invitation emails we quickly learned that the interest and appreciation for something like this was huge, so we're proud to say that all big stakeholders in Sweden will attend, including many Swedish legends. I will of course be there myself and I'm very excited to meet all the other participants and to see what will be the outcome of the day. I'm not saying we'll solve everything related to Swedish CS in one day, but this sure is one great step in the right direction. 💛💙

Some evening thoughts incoming, didn’t plan to write this but it’s easier than going back and replying to every individual tweet from the past days. See it as a transparent brain dump from a life long NIP fan, and NIP employee. To begin with I was fascinated by the amount of people celebrating us bombing out of the RMR, not only the amount but also the size and importance of some people participating in it. Talking as a fan myself, and someone who was outside of NIP not long ago, it’s hard to summarize where this level of gloating comes from. Is it old management? Is it the old old management? Is it NIP scamming player stories? Is it the rebranding? Is it the international roster? Is it Saudi? Is it China? Is it the weather? I don’t know, maybe a bit of everything? I don’t think anyone really knows? What I do know is that I decided to make NIP better from the inside, and I will keep doing that, every day. There are so many great people working at NIP, and I urge you to reach out to the players we just benched and ask them what they thought about their stay at NIP. Will there be things we could’ve done better? Absolutely, but there will also be things we are among the best in the world at. I know, I know, that’s hard to believe - but you wouldn’t believe the crazy stories we hear from different corners of esports. Oh, talking about that - transparency. So, as you might’ve noticed we’re trying this transparency thing out, and it seems like it’s… tricky. It’s not tricky to be transparent, but it’s really tricky to see the benefit when people twist what you say against you. “Bro, welcome to the internet.”, thank you! But I guess the problem I’ve noticed is that we can never truly be 100% transparent, so instead you give as many % transparency as you can to stay within contractual limitations and to not make any third party annoyed. But when you do that, people end up with a snapshot of transparency, which can be really confusing. Two interesting examples, both from the roster maniacs video: 1. There was a narrative created that NIP didn’t know who Donk was, because I said something along the lines of “new kids will come up all the time in CS2, just look at donk, no one knew who he was just a few months back”. Since I have the context of how well our CS staff scouts, it didn’t occur to me that without this context people can actually misinterpret it. 2. There are 100 reasons we picked Alex as an IGL, but the video can only be so long, so one of the few reasons that was mentioned was because we wanted to keep headtr1ck. While this was true at the time, it was only 1 out of 100 reasons, but the video probably framed it too much as “the reason”. Transparency trickiness strikes again! So yea absolutely some learnings there, but we will keep trying to be transparent. I really enjoy sharing insights and explaining what we do and why, and no matter if hate or love comes out of it I do think all of esports does benefit from a little more transparency, and honest people. Talking about honest people, let’s shortly talk about the amazing people we just had to say goodbye to at NIP. @djLCSGO: He was through so many crazy roster changes and curveballs, I don’t know how he kept standing up and gave it another try over and over again. This last try after we took over he got an honest chance, but it was potentially too late, it was time to move on. @hastecsgo: djL’s right hand, a real hard worker. This guy was always working, while balancing life with a family to take care of. I think it’s only a matter of time before haste becomes a tier 1 head coach, he has what it takes. @es3tag: It’s true what they say - the player everyone needs, but no one deserves. Putte will do anything for his team. He will take any role, any job, and just get it done with. I think, and hope, that Putte will go for IGLing in the next part of his career, I think he could truly excel at that. @k0nfig: And for Krelle it’s the opposite - it’s not true what they say! One of the most happy and loving people I’ve ever worked with. Will miss this guy a lot, and I must say I’m afraid that he will become crazy consistent and beat us on the server in the near future. @headtr1ckcs: Being part of a player’s first tier 1 journey is something else, it feels like Danya has been growing up with us. Has it been the easiest CS upbringing? No... He’s also been through a lot of different team mates and leaders, and it was just time for a reset. He still has all the tools to be a great AWPer one day. I don’t even know what this last part was, some kind of high school summary of my old classmates? Maybe I’m stepping outside some zone of what I should be communicating, well, we live and we learn. NIP is entering a new era, and I don’t mean this in a LinkedIn-exaggerate-kind-of-way, but we really are, or maybe more of an old era. We have some of the best CS staff members in the business, people like @THREAT_CS, @TroelsRobl, @SedaSmartie, @RobinJedhammar, @sprayxdCS and more. and in the coming months they will actually, finally, be allowed to do things from scratch. All their expertise and knowledge in one team, our team, your team. Being a team that people gloat at or not, it’s been reassuring and humbling to see that as soon as it was made clear that Ninjas in Pyjamas is truly being rebuilt, the legacy and history does mean something, it probably means everything. We have top tier players and coaches reaching out, showing interest, and being curious about what’s next. The question everyone is asking now is, what is our next step? Whatever it is, we will keep being transparent, and keep inviting you on the journey. You are welcome to gloat, and you are welcome to cheer us on. Most important is that you support esports, and CS. We have a new era of CS, and an old titan in NIP soon climbing back to the top. #GONINJAS