Hall of Fame: HeatoN

One of the best Counter-Strike players in the world in the early 2000s and someone who transcended the game, HeatoN is one of four inaugural inductees into the Hall of Fame.

Emil "⁠HeatoN⁠" Christensen never imagined a world where Sweden would struggle to remain relevant on the Counter-Strike stage.

As a player, HeatoN was part of a golden generation that flew Sweden’s flag high in the early 2000s. The country had such a vast talent pool that its national team won five of the first nine editions of ClanBase'S NationsCup, and national qualifiers often turned into bloodbath affairs, such was the number of Swedish teams playing at the highest level.

But even among this talented crowd, HeatoN stood out. He turned spraying into an art form and helped CS reach new levels of popularity during his time in Ninjas in Pyjamas and SK, winning nine CPL titles and one WCG medal before retiring in 2007.

HeatoN's rise to becoming the first true Counter-Strike superstar happened amid a perfect storm of circumstances. He was the breakout star on the best team in the world in 2001, a year that culminated in NIP winning CPL Winter — widely regarded as the game's first world championship — after beating North America's X3 in a closely contested grand final.

With $50,000 and bragging rights on the line, that match lives on in the game's folk memory, and it established Sweden as the dominant nation in Counter-Strike — a trend that would span nearly a decade.

"HeatoN's name stirred fear and commanded respect in the server," Ronald "⁠Rambo⁠" Kim, who was part of X3's lineup in 2001, tells HLTV. "He was a formidable opponent, inspiring a generation of gamers."

But as iconic as that CPL Winter final was, it was another match, earlier in that same tournament, that turned HeatoN into an instant sensation.

Three rounds into the upper bracket quarter-final game against 4Kings on Aztec, he quickly took down two opponents with a USP, picked up an AK-47 off the floor, and proceeded to get three more frags, two of them from long range.

It was a seminal moment in Counter-Strike history, and just like that, the legend of "the one and only" was born.

"It felt like God was taking my hand and shooting," HeatoN recalls in an interview with HLTV. "I still don't know where the fourth guy was. I just shot a few bullets through the wall. Then the last guy came through double doors and I got an easy frag."

It had taken HeatoN just one year to go from an unknown teenager his friends used to mock for how bad he was at Counter-Strike to an unstoppable force.

A foot injury sustained while playing ice hockey altered the course of his life. Unable to leave his house for a spell, he put time and effort into getting better at the game, and not long afterward, he found himself on  Nostradamus, one of the best teams in the country.

He proudly recalls how cheating accusations from established players quickly became commonplace.

"It was kind of a ropz story," he says. "vesslan and his team, MAFIA, were so convinced I was cheating. They were like, 'You have to come to LAN and prove you can do this because nobody can be this good.'

"That was the first enlightenment moment. Like, 'I'm pretty good at this.' Because they believed I was cheating. They were totally convinced. It was really cool."

HeatoN won his first CPL title in May 2001, when his SoA team beat Tommy "⁠Potti⁠" Ingemarsson's All Stars in the CPL Holland grand final in Loosdrecht. The two were already acquainted from facing each other in public servers and scrims, with HeatoN believing at first that Potti was cheating. His suspicions were proved wrong when he watched Potti win Babbage's CPL 2000 in Dallas.

"I had to come clean and apologize to him," HeatoN says, laughing. "We started becoming friends."

HeatoN and Potti linked up shortly after CPL Holland in mid-2001 and helped make NIP the best team in the world, lifting the CPL Europe London, CPL Europe Berlin and CPL Winter trophies in quick succession.

Surrounded by more famous and experienced teammates, HeatoN showed no signs of nerves and emerged as a flashy player thanks to his impressive spray control, which made him a fan favorite and his style became one that other players tried to emulate.

"We didn't have any fancy practice mods or anything as we do now in Counter-Strike," HeatoN explains. "So it was mostly shooting at a wall and overtraining the spray. Even in practice games, I would spray from really long distances to get into it all the time.

"My focus was on spraying all the time. And the more I did it, the more successful it was. It was so much easier to get multi-frags in certain situations."

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Hall of Fame: Potti

Potti became the brother HeatoN never had and taught him the ropes, inside and outside of the game. United by their relentless work ethic and desire to win, they formed a lethal partnership that lasted for years and yielded many international trophies.

"I really loved the game," HeatoN says. "That was the best thing I knew in life. I just wanted to put in the hours. I could actually feel that I played better and had that extra percentage of higher level if I put in the hours. And people didn't do that to the same extent.

"Potti and I were the same. We just wanted to practice and become better all the time. Even when there were no tournaments, we were playing 24/7. We just ate, slept and played Counter-Strike."

NIP were the team to beat heading into 2002, but a lack of sponsors led to their breakup halfway through the year, and the lineup's core, made up of HeatoN, Potti and Jorgen "⁠XeqtR⁠" Johannessen, was picked up by SK.

The level of support provided by the German organization was unparalleled at the time and gave the team a leg up on the rest of the field. While most players were forced to juggle the game with work and study, SK's team had, according to HeatoN, a decent salary that allowed them to focus on the game, and they even had their own practice room at the Inferno Online gaming center.

And though esports were still niche products in the early 2000s, SK excelled at marketing the players, who went on promotional tours around the world and were treated almost like rock stars.

SK spared no efforts in building an elite-level team in 2003 and, after signing Christer "⁠fisker⁠" Eriksson and Michael "⁠ahl⁠" Korduner at the start of the year, used their financial muscle to attract Ola "⁠elemeNt⁠" Moum from eoLithic, who had long struggled to find sponsors.

"HeatoN was the definition of energy," elemeNt recalls. "He brought so much passion to everything, and I couldn’t help but feed off it. He pushed everyone to step up their game and had this big personality that just made him the heart of the team."

The Norwegian's tactical acumen, especially in mid-round situations, took SK's team to new levels of success. They went on a tear in the final stretch of the season, winning four international events, CPL Summer, World Cyber Games, CPL Europe Copenhagen and CPL Winter, without dropping a map. They were so far ahead that the CPL Europe and WCG titles came while Abdisamad "⁠SpawN⁠" Mohamed was filling in for elemeNt.

"When we played a tournament, we could feel we were all in sync, we were all aligned and we knew what we were going to do," HeatoN reflects. "We were locked in. But before every single tournament, I was so scared, because we were practicing, and we got owned in a lot of games, and pretty hard sometimes.

"And then you're scared and you think, like, 'Shit, have we lost it?' But then you come to the tournament and everyone is locked in. It's a different ballpark, playing on LAN and online. And we just went with it.

"Mid-tournament, sometimes it felt we were pretty much unstoppable. But you got a reality check when you were practicing before it, which I think was a necessary thing so that you don't think you are untouchable. Because then people will catch up."

That's eventually what happened in 2004 after the surprise departure of elemeNt to NoA in the first-ever esports player transfer. All of a sudden, SK were beatable again, and that became very clear in the summer when they were upset by Virtus.pro in the ESWC quarter-finals and lost the CPL Summer title to Swedish rival EYEBALLERS.

Things were never quite the same again. HeatoN took it hard when elemeNt was sold to NoA as the two had become close friends, and he felt the Norwegian knew how to bring the best out of him. Then, towards the end of 2004, the team was involved in a contract dispute with SK, which decided to send its German squad to CPL Winter in retaliation.

The situation became so combative that Potti took a break from the game and the entire team left the organization at the end of the year.

At the same time, HeatoN had become disenchanted with Counter-Strike. He felt that the 1.5 and 1.6 updates had a tremendous impact on his sharpness, forcing him to change his play style. The earlier versions, which were more fast-paced and reliant on the type of individual duels he excelled at, had given way to a slower, more tactical game style.

"That kind of ended the happy days of Counter-Strike, for me at least," HeatoN acknowledges.

HeatoN revived the NIP brand at the beginning of 2005, though Potti only came back to activity several months later. He played until the end of the year before retiring from the game — another heavy blow to HeatoN's already dwindling motivation.

By then, World of Warcraft had become a distraction for HeatoN, eating up many hours of his day. No longer was Counter-Strike center stage in his mind. He got so hooked on the game that he would often alt-tab to WoW between rounds during scrims. "Horrible, horrible toward my teammates," he admits.

Potti's retirement, HeatoN acknowledged, was the "final nail in the coffin" and made it easier for him to hang up his mouse in 2007 — when NIP were far from being an elite side following the departures of Marcus "⁠zet⁠" Sundström (to Complexity), Oskar "⁠ins⁠" Holm, (to fnatic), SpawN and Robert "⁠RobbaN⁠" Dahlström (to SK).

Looking back, HeatoN wishes he had stopped playing earlier.

"I did not have the passion anymore," he says. "I was just around because I used to be this great player, but I was not anymore."

With HeatoN, Potti and other members of that first wave of Swedish players all moving on from the game, a new generation came through and picked up the torch. SK and fnatic helped keep Sweden at the top for many years in 1.6, led by players such as Christopher "⁠GeT_RiGhT⁠" Alesund, zet, Patrik "⁠f0rest⁠" Lindberg and Harley "⁠dsn⁠" Örwall.

In 2012, HeatoN again reawakened NIP, who put together a lineup that would dominate the CS:GO circuit in the game's early years and win a Major in 2014. He officially left the organization in 2018 and focused on streaming, which has been his main occupation since then, except for a brief period in which he was in charge of GODSENT as CEO.

It's almost painful for HeatoN to discuss the golden age of Swedish CS and all the great teams and players the country has produced in the past quarter-century. The sad reality is that Sweden has struggled to remain relevant on the global stage, failing to provide a single player to the HLTV Top 20 Player of the Year ranking since 2020.

Like Potti, HeatoN believes that the younger players lack the same drive and commitment of previous generations. But at the same time, he also believes that for too long, Swedish teams were resistant to the idea of changes, which limited opportunities for up-and-coming talents.

But it's not all gloom and doom. HeatoN is optimistic about the future of Swedish CS, given the talented crop of players that are rising through the ranks, like Liam "⁠MaiL09⁠" Tügel — whom he calls "the Swedish donk" —, Tim "⁠susp⁠" Ångström and Simon "⁠yxngstxr⁠" Boije.

Whether one of those players will reach the same level of star power as HeatoN, who transcended Counter-Strike at the height of his fame, remains to be seen. Critics, and teammates, can question HeatoN's level during his final years, but his hold on the cultural imaginary remains strong. He was a dominant figure in Counter-Strike in the early 2000s and the face of the game at a time when it was still in its infancy.

When asked about his legacy, HeatoN can't help but feel proud of himself.

"From everything I did for the game and in the game, people learned from me and started copying me, I'm super proud," he says. "Especialy in Sweden, being the face of esports as I was and have been for many years when people think of esports.

"I was kind of the front man for it and helped it grow so much in Sweden. I'm really, really proud of that and my career in general.

"Counter-Strike is my biggest passion in life. To this day, 25 years later, I spend so many hours every day in Counter-Strike, and I still love it. It's an amazing honor to be recognised and, to be honest, if we're going to boost ourselves a little bit, to be an important part in the history of Counter-Strike and esports."

This feature is part of a series on HLTV's Hall of Fame 2024 inductees. For more information about this initiative, presented by 1xBet, you can read our introduction article.