Ninjas in Pyjamas: How CS:GO’s First Dynasty Lost Its Way
Ninjas in Pyjamas: How CS:GO’s First Dynasty Lost Its Way
Few teams in Counter-Strike history carry a legacy as heavy as Ninjas in Pyjamas. At one point, NiP wasn’t just the best team in the world — they were the foundation of the entire CS:GO competitive scene.
They dominated the early era of the game with an absurd 87–0 map streak, reached five consecutive Major finals, and helped define what professional Counter-Strike looked like in its first years.
Yet today, the same organization struggles to remain inside the top 25 teams in the world.
NiP still competes in big tournaments and occasionally shows flashes of potential in CS2, but the team that once set the standard for everyone else has spent nearly a decade searching for a new identity.
How did the first great dynasty of CS:GO end up stuck chasing its own past?
The birth of the first CS:GO superteam, Five Major finals — but only one trophy, The slow end of a legendary roster, Living in the shadow of a dynasty, The endless search for the right sniper, The device gamble, The end of the Swedish identity, 2024 — the moment the crisis became undeniable, A problem NiP finally acknowledged, Another reset in 2025, The changes never stopped, Where NiP stands today, Is there still hope for NiP?, The real story of NiP’s decline
The birth of the first CS:GO superteam
When Counter-Strike: Global Offensive launched in 2012, the competitive scene was still in its infancy. Teams were experimenting with strategies, players were adjusting to the new mechanics, and no one knew which organizations would ultimately dominate the game.
NiP figured it out faster than everyone else.
The legendary roster consisted of:
GeT_RiGhT
f0rest
friberg
Xizt
Fifflaren
This lineup quickly became the most feared team in the world.
Their most famous achievement remains the almost unbelievable 87-match win streak, a record that still stands as one of the most remarkable runs in esports history. During this period, NiP were practically untouchable.
While other teams were still learning the game, the Swedish squad was already operating at a completely different level.
For a time, it genuinely felt like there were two versions of CS:GO being played: the one NiP played, and the one everyone else was trying to catch up to.
But even this era had one strange flaw.
Despite dominating nearly every tournament they entered, NiP repeatedly failed to win the one title that mattered most: a Major.
Five Major finals — but only one trophy
NiP’s Major history is one of the strangest stories in Counter-Strike.
The team reached five consecutive Major finals, something that still sounds unreal today. Yet for years they were unable to convert those opportunities into a championship.
The breakthrough finally came at ESL One Cologne 2014, where NiP defeated Fnatic and secured their first — and ultimately only — Major title.
The victory should have cemented the team’s legacy forever.
Instead, it marked the beginning of a slow and complicated decline.
The slow end of a legendary roster
Unlike many dominant teams that collapse overnight, NiP’s legendary lineup didn’t disappear immediately. The roster gradually changed over several years.
The first major departure came when Fifflaren stepped away from the team after the Major win in 2014.
At the time, it seemed like a natural transition. Many teams refresh their lineup after a long period of dominance.
But the problem was deeper than a single roster change.
NiP struggled to decide what it wanted to become next.
Instead of fully rebuilding, the organization spent years trying to balance nostalgia with progress. The core players stayed together longer than most championship teams usually do, and the team attempted to remain competitive while slowly adjusting the roster around them.
This approach kept NiP relevant, but it also prevented the organization from starting a true new era.
The final chapter of the legendary lineup closed in 2020, when f0rest left the team.
He was the last remaining player from the original roster that had dominated early CS:GO.
With his departure, the most iconic chapter in NiP’s history officially ended.
Living in the shadow of a dynasty
From that moment on, every new NiP roster faced an impossible comparison.
Fans, analysts, and the broader Counter-Strike community didn’t evaluate the team against its modern competitors. Instead, they compared every new lineup to the legendary roster of GeT_RiGhT, f0rest, friberg, Xizt, and Fifflaren.
And that comparison was always brutal.
The result was a strange identity crisis.
NiP wasn’t a rebuilding team, but it also wasn’t a contender anymore. The organization seemed trapped between honoring its past and creating something entirely new.
This led to years of half-restarts — roster changes that never fully reshaped the team.
The endless search for the right sniper
One of the most visible symptoms of this transitional period was the constant rotation of AWP players.
After Fifflaren’s departure, NiP experimented with several options:
Maikelele
allu
pyth
draken
Each player had moments where the team looked promising again. For example, during the allu era, NiP occasionally resembled a team capable of competing for big titles.
But the consistency was never there.
The community also remembers this period for a different reason: the infamous Red Bull meme surrounding allu’s occasionally unpredictable performances.
Behind the memes, however, was a deeper issue.
NiP still hadn’t figured out what the new version of the team should actually look like.
The device gamble
In 2021, NiP made what looked like the boldest move of their post-prime era.
They signed device.
At the time, device was widely considered one of the greatest players in Counter-Strike history and a central figure in the dominant Astralis era. His arrival instantly gave NiP credibility again.
The message was clear: NiP wasn’t rebuilding slowly. They wanted to jump straight back into the elite tier.
For a moment, the move seemed brilliant.
But reality quickly intervened.
By the end of 2021, device stepped away from competition due to serious health issues. Later he explained that the intense pressure had taken a massive toll on him, both physically and mentally.
In 2022, he returned to Astralis.
For NiP, this was more than just losing a star player.
It meant losing the entire foundation of the project that had been built around him.
The end of the Swedish identity
After the device experiment collapsed, NiP faced another critical decision.
The organization chose to abandon the traditional Swedish roster model and transition into an international lineup.
In 2022, the team signed:
Aleksib
k0nfig
headtr1ck
English became the team’s primary communication language.
From a competitive standpoint, the decision made sense. By that point, many of the world’s best Counter-Strike teams were already international.
But symbolically, it marked the end of something important.
For years, NiP had been the defining Swedish Counter-Strike organization. Once the roster became international, the team lost that cultural identity.
NiP was no longer “the Swedish powerhouse.”
It was simply another European team trying to find the right combination of players.
2024 — the moment the crisis became undeniable
By 2024, the problems were impossible to ignore.
NiP performed disastrously at the PGL Major Copenhagen Europe RMR, losing to:
Eternal Fire
AMKAL
SAW
The team finished last in the tournament and failed to qualify for a Major for the first time in years.
At the same time, NiP dropped to 27th place in the HLTV ranking, the lowest position in the organization’s history.
Internally, the management began openly discussing the need for a complete rebuild.
A problem NiP finally acknowledged
In a detailed HLTV interview about the rebuild, NiP coach THREAT described one of the biggest issues behind the team’s struggles.
For years, the organization had simply collected talented players, without fully considering how their roles and playstyles would fit together.
The rosters often looked impressive on paper.
But on the server, the chemistry wasn’t there.
NiP had been trying to assemble strong individuals instead of building a clear team identity.
Another reset in 2025
At the beginning of 2025, NiP once again rebuilt the roster from scratch.
The new lineup featured:
Snappi
sjuush
ewjerkz
arrozdoce
The only player retained from the previous roster was r1nkle.
HLTV noted a worrying detail at the time: this was NiP’s second complete rebuild in just nine months.
For an organization of NiP’s stature, that kind of instability is a major warning sign.
The changes never stopped
Even this lineup didn’t remain stable for long.
In July 2025, NiP benched arrozdoce and promoted xKacpersky from the Young Ninjas academy.
Then in January 2026, the roster changed again when cairne replaced ewjerkz.
The team that had been presented as the foundation of a new era quickly turned into yet another transitional lineup.
For a Tier-2 organization, that level of change might be normal.
For NiP, it reinforced the feeling that the project still lacked a clear direction.
Where NiP stands today
As of early 2026, the Ninjas in Pyjamas roster consists of:
Snappi
sjuush
r1nkle
xKacpersky
cairne
In global rankings, the team sits around the top 25–30 range.
Recent tournament results reflect that position.
At IEM Krakow, NiP finished 17–20th, and at ESL Pro League Season 23, they placed 17–19th.
They lost to teams like Legacy, M80, and G2, but managed to defeat NRG and Gaimin Gladiators.
This is no longer a collapsed roster.
But it is also far from a true Tier-1 contender.
Is there still hope for NiP?
Despite everything, the organization still has resources that many teams would envy.
NiP remains one of the most recognizable brands in Counter-Strike, and its academy system — Young Ninjas — continues to produce promising players.
The team has also shown occasional flashes of potential.
In 2025, NiP reached the final of StarLadder StarSeries Fall, where they ultimately lost to NAVI. They have also pushed top teams to close matches on several occasions.
These moments prove that the project isn’t completely broken.
But if NiP truly wants to return to the top, the organization will need more than another roster shuffle.
It needs a clear identity again.
They Weren’t Always Behind the Players. Where the Best CS2 Coaches Used to Play
The real story of NiP’s decline
In the end, NiP’s story isn’t about one bad roster move or one failed transfer.
It’s about what happens when a team becomes too legendary for its own good.
The organization spent years living in the shadow of its greatest lineup. Then it tried to shortcut its way back to the top through star signings. Later it recognized the structural problems — but still struggled to escape the cycle of constant resets.
Once, NiP was the team that defined Counter-Strike.
Today, it’s a team people talk about with a very different tone:
“Maybe this time it will work.”
For the first great dynasty of CS:GO, that might be the most painful change of all.
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