"The team has high ambition": Nivera on joining Revenant Esports' CS2 team and playing in Skyesports Championship 2024 [Exclusive]

Revenant Esports recently participated in the Skyesports Championship 2024. It was one of India's grandest stages for CS2 players and 12 international teams participated in the tournament. The team has a relatively fresh roster with each member having joined this year in June. Unfortunately, Revenant got eliminated during the Group Stage after losing against DMS, which was the latter's fourth win in a row at the event.

We had the chance to speak with Nabil "Nivera" Benrlitom after the team was eliminated at the Skyesports Championship 2024. He was one of the key players in Revenant who has recently transitioned to playing Counter-Strike 2. We spoke at length about his experience at the event and his thoughts about playing in India.

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Nivera opens up about joining Revenant Esports and playing at Skyesports Championship 2024

Nivera is a great addition to Revenant and has found success with the team. However, during the Skyesports Championship 2024 tournament, it would seem as if the lineup fell behind up against all the other more experienced rosters.

Regardless, he has no regrets about joining and sees it all as more of a learning experience maintaining that the team's high ambition is a key quality. With more time, they can conquer other tournaments similar to the Skyesports Championship 2024.

Q: Hello Nivera, could you tell us the motivations behind joining the Revenant roster as you transitioned to CS2?

Nivera: Talking about why I joined Revenant. I think it’s a team that has everything I was looking for. For my transition to Counter-Strike, I didn’t want to join like, too big a team or too small a team. So, it’s like right between and we have a lot of ambitions.

I talked to them before joining and they want to hit the top level for sure. That’s why we have brought a lot of big players, especially NBK. That’s why he was also interested in this project because there’s like a right balance between experienced and young players. So yeah, what made me join Revenant is really this. For my transition, I think it’s the best and the team has high ambitions as well.

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Q: So what has been your experience in India so far, the issues on the first day, and how it eventually panned out during the Skyesports Championship 2024?

Nivera: We’ve been talking a lot about this tournament, first of all, because it’s a big tournament or the biggest with this team. So, we had nothing to lose cause we are the underdogs, but there were like a lot of things to win in this tournament if we showed like a good result. Unfortunately, it didn’t happen.

If we talk about India now, the hospitality was very good, very great to be honest. I was also very surprised by like where all the teams (were) in the hotel and I think it was very nice to be honest. The rooms were very clean, everything was very clean.

We had some issues on the fist day, I think everyone saw that. Some internet issues, some tech issues, and they worked as fast as they could to fix those problems. On the second day, there were a little bit of issues, but not a lot, and we could keep playing this tournament. So, they were really, really reactive about that. That’s a really big point for them.

And about the country overall, we didn’t have the chance to visit too much because we stayed at the hotel and we played. We do everything here basically and we don’t go outside that much. So I can only say my, what to say, how I felt only about this hotel, not the whole country. But for me it has been very nice so far.

And yeah, I think a lot of players were very scared about coming here because of everything that's being said on the internet about the people here, the food and stuff, but what I can say is that at least here, the food was very nice. Some people got sick, like our teammate got sick, lauNX. But yeah, like a lot of, maybe 80%, didn’t get sick at all. And for me, the food was very good actually. So yeah, I think overall for my personal perspective, I've had a very good and clean experience in India.

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Revenant stood at the ninth-10th place in the Skyesports Championship 2024, which means it didn't manage to earn any prize money. However, the experience was seemingly rich based on what Nivera was able to tell us during the interview.

The Skyesports Championship 2024 certainly had its issues as BetBoom withdrew from the tournament citing unmet promises. However, the tournament continued without the team. The final came down to The MongolZ and 3D MAX, where the latter won first place along with the $120,000 prize money.