NRG Aceu On His Decision to Quit Competitive Apex Legends

Cover-Credits: 

NRG Aceu On His Decision to Quit Competitive Apex Legends

Abhimannu Das
Published On: 
  • Aceu opened up about his experience with professional CS:GO and his departure from Apex Legends' competitive scene
  • He revealed that he did not like the direction competitive Apex was heading towards and wanted to quit
  • NRG agreed to let him move to a content creation role and he currently plays Valorant, Resident Evil Village, Dark Souls and other variety titles

NRG’s Brandon ‘Aceu’ Winn was the biggest name in competitive Apex Legends when the game released back in 2019. He played alongside Coby ‘dizzy’ Meadows and Marshall ‘Mohr’ Mohr for NRG, and dominated esports events. Despite NRG's success, players in the squad did not stick together for too long. Dizzy quit competitive Apex in 2019 and Aceu moved on to become a content creator for NRG. Aceu currently plays Valorant and in May his livestreams attracted over 15K average concurrent viewers. The community has been speculating why the biggest name in Apex Legends esports quit playing competitively but Aceu never opened up about it, until now. 

Why Did Aceu Quit Apex Legends Competitive

While Aceu left Apex Legends’ competitive scene, he still plays the game from time to time. During his recent Season 9 streams, he crossed over 25K viewers. Following his departure from Apex Legends, he moved to Valorant and he has also been streaming Dark Souls and Resident Evil Village recently. After experiencing a growth of over 80% on his channel this month, the former Apex pro decided to reveal why he quit competing. 

In a video posted to his YouTube channel, Aceu talked about how he did not know what a competitive battle royale looked like. In the early days of Apex, tournaments involved getting the most amount of kills in a limited time. Aceu said “It wasn’t actual competitive. I’ve never played battle royales competitively, so I didn’t know what I was getting myself into. Then competitive started forming, and I started seeing what a competitive battle royale is, and that completely pushed me away.”

Aceu revealed that he was dropped from his former CS:GO team eUnited and he was quick to join NRG as an Apex Legends player to make ends meet. But eventually, Apex Legends dropped the kill race format and focused more on standard battle royale matches where both kills and placement matter. Aceu revealed that he disliked the change and it made him dislike the game. He added that he was “mentally checked out for a long time.”

With more tournaments piling on, he found himself in a situation where he did not want to leave NRG but he did not want to compete in Apex Legends either. The organization eventually agreed to let him shift to a content creation role. Since his departure, NRG signed Nathan ‘nafen’ Nguyen, Aidan ‘rocket’ Grodin, and Chris ‘sweetdreams’ Sexton to compete under the brand. The organization is still the highest-ranking team in North America with 40,175 ALGS (Apex Legends Global Series) circuit points under its belt, just 105 ahead of TSM’s 40,070 points. 

RELATED:  Aceu Valorant Settings 2021: Crosshair, Keybinds and Video Settings


author profile picture
Abhimannu is a PC esports writer at AFK Gaming. With over seven years of experience in esports journalism, he has worked on a myriad of games and their ecosystems including Valorant, Overwatch and Apex Legends.

Follow us on social media

facebook-logotwitter-logoinstagram-logodiscord-logolinkedin-logo
google-news-logo

Others Also Read