The end of the year hasn’t been great to Nicolai “dev1ce” Reedtz, one of the greatest CS:GO players of all time and currently the face of Ninjas in Pyjamas’ roster.

The 26-year-old missed the semifinals and grand finals of IEM Winter earlier this month due to health issues and wasn’t even fielded for BLAST Premier World Final, the last tie -one Counter-Strike event of 2021. The reasoning behind his absence wasn’t disclosed by NiP or dev1ce himself until last night. The star AWPer, though, revealed why he missed the last matches of the year following Dexerto and 1pv.fr’s joint report that stated he wants to play for Astralis once again.

“My mental health has taken a hammering this year, for both personal reasons and the pressure that comes with playing professional esports,” dev1ce said on Twitter. “I have been taking active steps toward recovery and am looking forward to putting in the work that will enable me to get back to the top of my game and be the best version of myself.”

During dev1ce’s absence, NiP played with Love “phzy” Smidebrant, the AWPer from the academy team. Although he played well despite the a baptism of fire, the team missed dev1ce’s capability to carry matches. The Swedish squad lost the IEM Winter grand finals to Vitality and were one of the two first teams eliminated from the BLAST Premier World Final.

Dev1ce said he hopes that revealing what caused him to miss the last matches of the year will stop “further unsettling rumors”. He also asked the media to respect his privacy in the meantime. The reports, though, did not state that he was joining Astralis again, it just pointed out that he wanted to.

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