“Never for sale,” says CS2 scout about superstar player before quoting $5 million price tag

In a wide-ranging interview with Erik Shokov, Team Spirit scout Alexey “OverDrive” Birukov has quoted an eye-popping number about what it would take to pry their young Counter-Strike superstar from their cold, ghostly hands, before hastily adding that, of course, he wouldn’t want to go anywhere anyway.

We have all run out of superlatives long ago about the skill and quality on display of donk, the 17-year-old Russian phenom who took tier 1 CS by storm in 2024. The youngster put up a 1.70 rating at IEM Katowice and became the youngest-ever player to be named an HLTV MVP at the tournament. This was sandwiched between two other MVP awards at BetBoom Dacha Dubai  2023 and BetBoom Dacha Belgrade 2024.