Team Vitality has been on an exceptional journey in 2025, claiming the top spot in Valve’s global rankings and securing multiple tournament victories, including the prestigious BLAST.tv Austin Major.
Richard “shox” Papillon who played for Team Vitality from 2019 to 2021 and was part of the squad that won EPICENTER 2019 and Intel Extreme Masters XVI – Winter 2021 believes the French organisation is having its defining moment in CS:GO history.
shox stated, “Counter-Strike has seen the domination of many teams with eras. Ninjas in Pyjamas, Astralis, Team Liquid, Luminosity, Fnatic, and so on.” Team Vitality has reached a stage where everything is falling into place. They’ve got great players. More importantly, though, they’re unlocking the potential of every player. Shox thinks Vitality is only successful because of what happens behind the scenes by their management, coaches, managers and analysts.
According to him, Team Vitality’s management team is perhaps one of the best if not the best in the world. Team Vitality works hard to make players feel comfortable, which goes a long way. If you feel at home in your team, you can perform at a much higher level. This unseen work that happens off-server is one of my reasons why Vitality happen to be on top now.
Reflecting on a Legendary Career in Counter-Strike
Shox’s professional career runs from 2008 to as recently as 2024 over three versions of Counter-Strike. When quizzed on the highlights of his career, he said it was tough to pick from so much.
shox noted a difficulty selecting few moments after experiencing so many different storylines. My two biggest achievements are winning a Major in 2014, something every Counter-Strike player dreams of. The other is winning the Esports Championship Series in 2016 with G2. It was special because that was my first official tournament as an in-game leader and winning it against Luminosity—who were world no. 1 at that time—felt great.
Since cutting down on his competitive play in 2023, shox has played in qualifiers and showmatchs. He says that the CS esports scene has grown a lot ever since he started playing the game.
There’s no doubt that the scene has improved,” shox said. Today we have a bigger community of people sharing their experiences. I remember when I was younger I dreamt of being part of a team to compete professionally in tournaments. Now, 20 years later, we’re filling events and stadiums with thousands of fans worldwide.
The Future of Shox in Counter-Strike
Shox now focuses on making content for Twitch and YouTube to grow his audience similarly to streamers. But will he ever officially retire from competitive Counter-Strike? questions still hangs on.
“I have not culminated my retirement, and I don’t know if I’ll come back,” shox stated. It’s hard to think I will never go back after 15 to 20 years of doing something. I am happy doing content creation these days and not really thinking of retirement now.
He stated a day might come when like a reflection on my career, I will have to come to terms with the fact I won’t compete again. But I can’t say that right now – competitive by nature, I still see myself performing on stage.