Andreas "Xyp9x" Højsleth will indeed be leaving Astralis for an indefinite period, both player and organization have confirmed. Reports surfaced yesterday of the pending move but nothing was official until today. Marco "Snappi" Pfeiffer will fill in for Xyp9x for the time being.
Burnout becoming a problem
In the span of a week, two members of the most successful CS:GO organization of all time have taken sick leave due to burnout. Lukas "gla1ve" Rossander was the first to do so, but his announcement was taken rather lightly as Astralis had brought in Jacob "JUGi" Hansen for that purpose - to give the regulars some potential time off.
Xyp9x doing the same just a week later is a whole new story though. This time, Astralis didn't have a ready-made substitute to step into the lineup. If gla1ve taking a break could have been viewed as a planned rest for the captain, this is certainly not.
Many names were thrown around for potential Xyp9x stand-ins in the past 24 hours, none of which was Snappi's. Well, the veteran is the correct answer to the question of who's joining Astralis. There's no doubt this is an emergency call-up but this is still Astralis we're talking about so the team should be just fine. Furthermore, Snappi is familiar with JUGi as they were teammates on Heroic back in 2017-18.
There is no timeline for Xyp9x's return just like with gla1ve. It could be weeks, it could be months. What's important is for the two CS:GO stars to recover their health completely and be at 100% whenever they return.
Astralis are set to compete in the BLAST Premier Spring Showdown beginning Monday, June 1, before entering the playoff stage of DreamHack Masters Spring Europe on June 8.
