kennyS: "I realised I missed CS when I went to the Major in Antwerp"

The legendary AWPer appeared on HLTV Confirmed to discuss his long stay on the bench in G2, rediscovering his love for the game at the PGL Major Antwerp, and his move to Falcons.

Falcons player and legend of the game Kenny "⁠kennyS⁠" Schrub appeared on HLTV Confirmed on Monday, where he opened up about his long break away from Counter-Strike and his unenviable contract situation with G2 during that time. The 27-year-old AWPer explained that he was relieved to have a break from the game but that he was benched shortly after signing a two-year contract extension.

“We agreed on a lot of conditions, everything went pretty smoothly between them and me," kennyS explained. "The only thing that bothered me is that they re-signed me before benching me. Which makes sense business-wise. It’s pretty smart of them but, obviously, I was not aware. So after like one week or two weeks of signing my new contract, I got benched. Maybe the new contract was too beautiful to be real."

"Unfortunately I’m not only a player who has good performances. I’m also a player with followers and kind of a brand. So the price, even after a year, was still really really high, a price that myself as a businessman would not want to pay for a player that is 27 years old and a player that was showing a bad last year of competition."

kennyS expanded on his reaction to being benched, explaining that at first, he was happy to take a prolonged hiatus from the game. "After getting benched I was actually pretty happy, I needed that mental break. At some point, 18 months on the bench was a little too much."

During his time away from playing, kennyS found himself at a crossroads. He had spent so much of his life competing in Counter-Strike, whether that was Source or Global-Offensive, so when he was benched he didn't know what he what wanted to do anymore. "I ended up with my ass between two chairs, not knowing what I really wanted to do. If I wanted to focus on content creation, which didn’t feel natural to me because I always had the feeling that I’ve had unfinished business with my career."

The Frenchman continued to talk about his internal dialogue regarding his future, revealing the moment at which he was swayed to come back to CS:GO. “I think I realised I missed CS when I went to the Major in Antwerp." According to kennyS it was the stage, the atmosphere, and everything about being back on LAN that reminded him of why he loved competing so much.

“Suddenly I started feeling really bad about being benched, which is surprising because at first, I was really happy for quite a while because being a streamer means I am my own boss. So I do whatever I want whenever I want. That was a pretty good time, but I would say six or seven months ago I realised that what I really wanted to do was to come back and deal with the unfinished business which was my career.”

kennyS is now a member of Falcons and is back playing in the French scene, but there were multiple options on the table before he even joined G2, including Falcons trying to buy him and the possibility of playing VALORANT. The AWPer spoke at length about his options at the time, sharing details from behind the scenes about a few moves that were discussed, such as to play in the Vitality VALORANT squad.

You can watch the whole HLTV Confirmed episode with kennyS on YouTube, or listen in audio form via popular podcast apps.