I wanted to remain sober at first and not speak, but I have thought a lot about Malek since the announcement of his passing, and I told myself that it was a good thing to pay tribute to him. I met him on a TeamSpeak we called "TS Netteux" back in the day, over 10 years ago now. It was a TS where almost the entire French subtop scene of the early CS:GO was present. I still don't know how I ended up there since I was just a guy who played on FACEIT and had never played as a team. I found myself with pros and semi-pros from the scene, and I was so happy to be with those guys and to be able to play with them. My only obsession was for one of them to give me a chance to play with them as a team. There were several young players in the same situation on the TS, we had no concept of team play, we only thought about individual skill and making highlights to impress the subtop players. I remember one day when Malek had us join a server, with other guys like me who were hanging around on the TS. We were on Dust2, and he was telling us to imagine a line that divides the map in two, the bombsite A and the bombsite B, and that the goal as terrorists was to go to the bombsite where there were the least CTs. He also made comments about our approach to the game: "You only think about shooting and getting kills, but in a round, the time you spend shooting an enemy is 2 seconds. You put all your attention on those 2 seconds, but what are you doing for the next 1 minute and 40 seconds, and what can you do to help your team win the round?" He was teaching us the basics of team play, and we listened to him attentively. I had the opportunity to run into him at LANs from time to time and chat a bit with him. We weren't particularly close, but the exchanges were always fascinating and very direct with him. I think he wanted to be validated by his peers, like all of us, the players and more broadly, the actors of the CS scene in France. And it's true that having a track record helps a lot to obtain that validation, but I think it's important to value his work, and more broadly the work of passionate people in the scene, whether they have a track record or have done great things in the competitive scene or not. Rest in peace, Malek. (translated)