With talent and experience in spades the “Verdant fe” squad with headlined by Ex-Bleed player Cai “CYPHER” Watson have been making waves here at EPIC 43, with the grand final just around the corner for “Verdant fe,” preparations are well under way for both teams. Prior to qualifying to the grand finals CYPHER sat down with UKCSGO to talk all things Bleed, Unpaid and EPIC 43.
With missing payments and unpaid bootcamps, CYPHER faced a rough period of uncertainty after BLEED went radio silent, eventually CYPHER and his roster decided to cut ties with BLEED. Taking back some control of their future the Unpaid squad have gone their separate ways, with Cypher already receiving offers from a few teams.
To begin with, if you don’t mind talking timeline with me I assume there was conversations with yourself and the rest of the team before Kassad tweet went public letting everyone about cutting ties with BLEED, what was the timeline for that? How long before did you make that decision before you went public?
I think after the RES tournament, we sat down and said were going to give it two months, obviously it hasn’t been two months but I mean what can you do when people get good offers you know? Things happen fast so when you get good offers you cant delay it you know? Originally it was going to be two months and were going wait until the RMR – practice, play tournaments and then offers came and people leave you know? It happens.
So obviously there was a lot of multitude of missing salaries, bootcamps not being paid for kind of thing, so what was the final straw that kinda made you pull the trigger on the decision to go “we need to take a step back now?”
It all just got a bit too much in terms of salaries not coming – org being zero help no bootcamps. They (BLEED) don’t even wanna pay buyouts for players even if its a tiny, obviously not a tiny amount but compared to what they said they had, a tiny amount.
With the salary not coming in the vibe in the team must have been really challenging, what was it like trying to keep up the motivation? Trying to keep everything going, whilst you were in so much uncertainty.
I think, like obviously its what you kind of do when you’re a professional in a sense, you focus more on your job at hand and then you can focus on the payments later on, but it got to the point where we had to be worried about payments. We would just focus on the games we had you know? We did what we had to do and then the motivation it got hard eventually because people had worrying about bills and then that was when it was like ‘okay we have to do something.’
Kassad put out a tweet earlier talking about going your separate ways, so specifically for you then rather than the project as a whole, what does the future have in store for you?
I’m not too sure yet, I’ve got a few offers but it’s something I don’t wanna pull the trigger on yet. I wanna see whats right for me and then go around that. Its all up in the air. I wanna see if i get anything after the RMR, which, who knows, I probably won’t but its worth to see.
Finally to sort of round out the unpaid section, what was it like playing under Kassad as a coach compared to any other coaches you’ve played for?
I haven’t had many coaches really, only Juve. I mean I say I haven’t had many I’ve had Juve, rejin, XTQZZZ and Alex (Kassad). Kassad is a really loyal person if anyone shit talks you, he has your back, tactical wise hes pretty good as well, he stays in the meta, hes been a really good coach.
Pivoting towards the event here today, how are you finding the event so far?
Honestly? I have missed EPIC.LAN man, its so nice to chill with my friends you know? LANs are so fun no matter what level you’re going to be at you know? But EPIC LAN is, in a kinda cringe way, its a homely vibe. It’s so fun shouting at your friends across the hall, them shouting back at you when you lose the round. Its just so much fun to stay playing CS but then doing it in a fun way as well, honestly EPIC LAN is so good.
We spoke to Gizmy earlier. It sounded like from what he said he was a last minute addition, so how as a whole did the squad come together?
When we left BLEED things were kinda up in the air and then I saw that we had one tournament in Thunderpick. I was like ‘lets see how that goes’ and then after RES we were going to play Thunderpick, but then we didn’t. So then a few days before I said lets get these tickets sorted if we can go, then we have the tickets and we get everything sorted. So it was really kinda last minute, it was like max one week that we had. Luckily we were also going to be in the casual hall but gumpster [EPIC.LAN League Ops manager] hooked us up.
Naturally you’ll have expectations of yourself coming here because of not just your own talent but also your teammates that your playing with but you’re also a mix so you’re probably not coming in with a great deal of pressure. So what kind of expectations do you have of yourself here at the event.
At the end of the day we’re here to have fun, like you said. It’s EPIC LAN its no pressure, we’re friends, we’re playing to have fun were drinking all now.`We wanna win but like everyone who plays they wanna win.
Finally to round it out and talk about the UK scene as a whole, what’s your overall opinion of the competition here? Obviously you say that a lot of people are your friends how do you see the shifts within the UK scene and the players you’re playing against?
It’s hard to say to be honest with you. I don’t know if it sounds toxic but in my opinion no matter how good the mix is, you should never really let a mix beat people who pracc. This is what I’ve always said, UK CS isn’t the greatest but I’m not too sure whats wrong. Some people are so individually good but I’m not sure if its work ethic or things where it kind of drags them down. It’s a shame because some people can do really good.
