Justin "jks" Savage life, career & more
Topic: CS:GO Justin "jks" Savage's career, story
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Justin „jks“ Savage. A 26 year old CS:GO professional player who was born on 12.12.1995 and was recently standing in for Robin "ropz" Kool at IEM Katowice 2022. After his interview with HLTV, the Australian and his current struggle to find a new home, was a hot topic on Twitter. We want to give you a short overview of Justin's career, his first and latest teams, and his current point of view. Stay tuned and enjoy reading if you´re interested in the story of an amazing rifler who is currently looking for a team!
Career Start
Savage played his first Liquipedia registered tournament in 2013 under the banner of Archaic eSports alongside a full Australian lineup. In April of 2014, he was signed by VOX Eminor and replacing Iain "SnypeR" Turner. Only a few months later, he participated in his first ever Major in Cologne. The lineup back than consisted of SPUNJ, AZR, Havoc and topguN. Although the team fell short pretty clearly to Titan and Dignitas in Group D, they stuck together and managed to qualify themselves for the Katowice 2015 Major. There, with a win against FlipSid3 Tactics, the lineup placed 9-12th.
In mid 2015, the whole lineup decided to transfer to Renegades who were formerly known as a League of Legends team under the name of Misfits. As time will show, Savage found a new home in Renegades. Despite multiple lineup changes in-between, together with AZR, he was loyal to the organization for more than four years. The Australian started to participate In S-Tier events regularly in 2015. The biggest success for the lineup, apart from qualifying for another Major at ESL Cologne 2015, was the second place finish at DreamHack Open Winter 2016, where jks played his first ever S-Tier final.
In 2017 & 2018 jks, together with Renegades, managed to win multiple A-Tier events and participated in S-Tier events like ESL Pro League regularly. While both Majors in 2018 didn´t work out well for the team, 2019 started with a great showing at the Katowice Major. The results for the lineup, consisting out of AZR, Liazz, jkaem, Gratisfaction and jks became more and more consistent and later in 2019, they managed to place third at the Berlin Major, inarguably making that Savage's biggest success in his career thus far. After another great event at StarSeries & i-League CS:GO Season 8 in Belek, Turkey, the squad was signed by 100 Thieves, who was now fielding their second Counter-Strike roster after a failed project with former Immortals core trio back in December of 2017.
Changes
The Counter-Strike community and possibly also the lineup themselves were shocked after CEO and founder Matthew "Nadeshot" Haag decided to withdraw from the CS:GO once again on the 12.10.2020. The reasons behind the withdrawing were mostly the uncertainties around the COVID pandemic and the fact that most big tournaments are played in Europe, far away from the organizations headquarters in Los Angeles. Although Nadeshot said to not rule out the possibility of the organization's return to the world class title, no apparent moves have yet been made to doing so. Nadeshot's Statement:
"What's happening right now in CS:GO is that everything is transitioning over to Europe. We talked to our players about what solutions we could find because they've been competing their butts off. They've done the best job that they could to bring the results that we strive for. Unfortunately, we have fallen short quite a bit. Even if we wanted to make roster changes, there were still hurdles in our way. Right now, with the qualifications and the points system for Majors, any roster movement that we would have made could have jeopardized our position or our opportunity to even compete at a Major. And that was a gigantic roadblock." (Source: HLTV)
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New Opportunities
For jks, a new opportunity now came up. Jason Lake, the CEO of Complexity, approached Justin and agreed on a transfer in October 2020. The Australian star came as a replacement for Owen "oBo" Schlatter, who decided to bench himself from Complexity in a last minute decision to go back to his home. The transfer seemed like the perfect fit and Savage was looking forward to winning trophies with his new team. Here´s a little part of an interview he had with HLTV shortly after joining Complexity:
“Moving away from 100 Thieves was a really big step for me and a big decision, so I feel like I've taken a different approach and at least now I feel like I'm at the point in my career where I really just want to win a lot of things. This is the reason why I made the decision to come to Complexity. It's because I feel like we have a really good chance of winning a lot of tournaments and I felt like I needed to take a different approach to go to a team where I didn't really know anyone, to challenge myself a little bit more and to grow more as a person and as a player.” (Source: HLTV)
Sadly, things didn´t work out quite as planned and the team around In-Game Leader Benjamin "blameF" Bremer couldn´t catch up to their A-game, the one that won them BLAST Premier: Spring 2020 European Finals in June of 2020. From time to time, Complexity showed off great performances like ones at the Intel Extreme Masters XV - Beijing Online: Europe and the BLAST Premier: Spring Groups 2021, but the roster was just not meant to be and the development was also slowed down by injuries from teammates Valentin "poizon" Vasilev as well as Kristian "k0nfig" Wienecke. The biggest disappointment was the failed Major qualification after an unfortunate showing at IEM Fall, where k0nfig couldn´t be part of the lineup due to a wrist injury.
Departure
On 17.11.2021, jks announced on Twitter that he´s still under contract with Complexity but looking for new options going forward. Furthermore, he stated:
“Just want to say thanks to Jason Lake and the entire team at Complexity for the time that I've been a part of the organization. Despite not having all the success we wanted to share when I first joined, you guys have been great to me, and I appreciate all you've done for me!”
Unfortunately, Savage was unable to find a new home during the winter break and stopped playing completely for some time. As mentioned in an HLTV interview, which was just done recently, he didn´t play CS:GO since mid December to enjoy a holiday. Because of his struggle in finding a new team and with that extending his Visa, it was also difficult for him to rent a fixed place in order to have a setup to play with. Most recently, Danish teams Copenhagen Flames and Astralis offered him facilities to play at and due to a Covid-19 infection from ropz, Justin suddenly had the opportunity to perform at the highest level as he got asked by FaZe Clan if he could stand in for the event. Although not being in his best practice shape, he performed surprisingly well and managed to win each of the three games with FaZe. Sadly, he had to step aside once again by the fourth match as ropz came back to the lineup, but he at least has the time to prove his worthiness in Tier-1 Counter Strike. We wish him all the best for the coming months and hope that we will soon again see some action from jks on the biggest stages!
We hope you enjoyed reading about the career of Justin "jks" Savage and his current situation. If you want read more CS:GO related articles, check out our "general" category!
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