With Team Spirit emerging victorious in a 3:2 Grand Final thriller against Virtus.pro at BetBoom Dacha 2025, the donk CS2 hype continues to grow. The 16-year-old rifler, Danil ‘donk‘ Kryshkovets, is seen as the biggest young talent in the world right now, and one of the best CS players to emerge in a very long time.
So why the excitement around donk in CS2? Let’s find out.
The hype around donk in CS2
Image credit: Cybersport
CS2 is just donk’s game. His aggressive playstyle is rewarded by the title’s swing-or-be-swung nature. He takes fights without fear, confident that his aim is better than his opponent’s. During the BetBoom Dacha 2025 Final, it was donk’s cracking open of Virtus.pro’s bomb sites with multi-frags that saw them through the final overtime. It’s like he doesn’t feel the pressure of the occasion at all.
His reward here was a tournament MVP award, becoming the second-youngest player to ever win one behind sergej. By most measurable metrics, donk was the only choice, an incredible feat given his age.
It’s onward and upward for donk in CS2 now. He’s two for two in LAN wins, after the Pari Dunav Party earlier this year, so he’ll head into 2025 hungry for more success. Spirit’s absence as an ESL Partner Team means we won’t see as much as we’d like of the team, but hopefully they can reach plenty of LAN events so donk can show what he can do against world-class opposition.
Spirit’s Reverse Sweep
Credit: Team__Spirit on Twitter
Don’t let the hype around donk in CS2 see you forget what a colossal team effort this was from Spirit. After going 2:0 down, it seemed they were destined to settle for second place, and only a monumental comeback in the most exhausting of circumstances could prevent it. With Jame and Virtus.pro’s unique brand of CS taking every round the distance, it wasn’t going to be easy.
Yet in the final three maps, Spirit made things look easy. A myriad of technical issues on the final map of Anubis took the shine off of proceedings, but it was nonetheless impressive from Spirit. In doing so, they became the first team ever to reverse-sweep a best-of-5 Grand Final on LAN. It remains to be seen if this is one of the effects of MR12 on CS2 esports. Still, it’s a great title to hold.
While the donk CS2 hype will only grow from here, players like ArtFr0st and zont1x should be given plenty of credit for their own role in this tournament win.
