Arteezy admitted that he had planned to end his career 10 years ago

Artur “Arteezy” Babaev stated that he had planned to end his professional Dota 2 career after The International 2016.

The player made this statement on Twitch.

“Basically, at boot camp before The International 2016, all I did was play Overwatch. I wasn’t fully engaged in the preparation. I hated the team. I hated every second I spent on that team. It was awful. I didn’t like it—the players were all very toxic. I was toxic myself. That’s why Universe left us. Universe literally changed his mind at the last minute and returned to Evil Geniuses before TI6. That was about a month and a half before the tournament. He just came into my room one night and said, ‘Dude, I’m leaving.’ I asked him to explain, and he said he was going back to EG.

It turned out that Universe replaced BuLba on EG, and BuLba came back to us at Team Secret. And after that, everything was just… I don’t know. It was a terrible team, and I completely dropped out of the process. I just started playing Overwatch all day long. I played about six hours a day. Probably even more.

We practiced a lot; a lot of the guys would go play public matches, but I was like, “Nah, that’s it. I don’t want to do this. I want to play Overwatch.” After TI6, I was planning to quit Dota. I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this before, but I was planning to end my career after TI6. But then SumaiL asked me to join EG, and I was like: “Alright, I’ll play. Why not?” But initially, I was planning to leave.”

Acording to Artur “Arteezy” Babaev, when he was playing for Team Secret, the atmosphere on the team was so unbearable that he practically stopped preparing for TI6, focusing his attention on Overwatch instead. The player admitted that at the time he was seriously considering ending his career, but decided against it when he received an invitation to join another team.

As a reminder, Artur “Arteezy” Babaev played in the qualifiers for The International 2026 alongside Topias “Topson” Taavitsainen and Sebastian “Ceb” Debs.