NAVI Comment on Replacing GeneRaL with RAMZES666

Natus Vincere have released a video in which three members of their Dota 2 roster – the team’s coach Andrey "Mag" Chipenko with players Alik "V-Tune" Vorobey and Andrii "ALWAYSWANNAFLY" Bondarenko – comment on the recent controversial decision to replace Viktor "GeneRaL" Nigrini by Roman "RAMZES666" Kushnarev.

In the video Mag explains that although it might have looked like all members of the team were best friends, in fact the team has been dealing with internal conflicts for the past six months and the disagreements started to escalate once the team arrived to bootcamp.

According to Mag, one of the most apparent problems within the team was a lack of a leader who can make calls during the game. When the team started training with RAMZES666 ahead of the Singapore Major, where he was supposed to stand-in for Bogdan "Iceberg" Vasilenko due to his illness, the team felt that it became much more comfortable to play and saw a leader in him.

Meanwhile ALWAYSWANNAFLY said that the team had not been able to progress for the last few months and was close to falling apart – according to AWF, recently the team lost 39 out of 40 practice matches. V-Tune expressed regrets about the situation and stated that the team is focused on the Dota Pro Circuit’s second season.

Earlier GeneRaL revealed that he did not expect to be kicked from the team and learned the news last minute. According to him, when assembling the team its members agreed to complete the season without any roster changes, no matter what. He also said that the team’s midlaner Iceberg was close to being kicked just a few weeks ago, however it did not happen. The player doubts he will have enough time to find a new team before the second season starts.

Natus Vincere announced that RAMZES666 replaced GeneRaL this weekend. The initial announcement was scarce on details – later the organization’s CEO Evheniy Zolotarev said that they communicated the change in a “clumsy way” due to objective reasons. According to his Telegram post, their Dota 2 team has a lot of independence and the decision was up to players, not the management.