The search for an adequate replacement for Kevin “keev” Bartholomäus has finally come to an end! We are proud to join forces with Owen “smooya” Butterfield, one of the most skillful CS:GO players in the United Kingdom, well known for his outstanding talent as an awper.
Despite his young age, he has already gathered a vast amount of experience on both national and international stages. Just in the past few weeks, he qualified for the MDL Premier League together with his former Epsilon squad and won the Premiership Spring 2018 in Birmingham, after a 3-0 victory in the grand final against Vexed Gaming.
We would like to express our thanks to Nikola “LEGIJA” Ninic for standing-in for the team during this transitional period, and helping the team qualify for the ESEA Season 27 MDL Global Challenge as well as ESL One Belo Horizonte 2018, one of the most significant tournaments in the coming months.
We are also grateful to Epsilon for the cooperation and the smooth buyout process, and we look forward to continuing our journey, backed by the AWP prowess of smooya, with the goal of making both our German and international fans proud. Please welcome Owen “smooya” Butterfield as we open a new chapter in the story of Berlin International Gaming!
Statement Daniel Finkler
After the Major in Atlanta / Boston we started to restructure our CS:GO division for the upcoming challenges in 2018. After the signing of Tizian “tiziaN” Feldbusch, one of the most promising German players on the market, we still had to find a suitable replacement for Kevin “keev” Bartholomäus. At this point I want to express my deep gratitude to our Head of CS:GO, Nikola “LEGIJA” Ninic. Besides his great stand-in performances in this transitional period, he analyzed the whole player market and figured out potential candidates from Germany and Europe. Owen “smooya” Butterfield is the result of this in-depth analysis and we’re proud to join forces with one of the most talented European AWP players on the market. Welcome to BIG!
Statement Christian Lenz, CGO
Many people might wonder about us picking an international player. In an interview for UNIRKN regarding our lineup situation after the Major I said once, that calling and staying German is still our direction for the future. However, after analyzing the player market for a long period, we realized that we have to consider international options as well to complete our roster. We wanted to join forces with an outstanding talent to fulfill that super important AWP-role and find the best solution for the team. Right now, we don’t see this special kind of talent in Germany, that could help us immediately and is not bound to an organization. German CS:GO had some promising results lately with ESG and aTTaX, anyways the young players need more time and experience (especially offline) on the international parquet. Our newest addition smooya is a great guy, who lives CS:GO every day and works hard on his individual skill, he is exactly the crazy type of player we were looking for.
Statement Owen “smooya” Butterfield
Firstly I would like to thank Epsilon for giving me my first opportunity to prove what I can do at a higher level of Counter-Strike, without Epsilon I would never of been given this opportunity to play with such an amazing team so I thank them for all the support they have given me over the past 9 months. As for now I am really excited to start my new adventure under BIG and once again prove that I can play at the highest level of CS while playing under a solid team. Getting this chance to play with such players is amazing for me personally as I’ve looked up to some of these players for years and now I get the chance to create history with them. My main goals with BIG are to make it to legend status at the FACEIT major in London, till then I just want to improve day by day.
BIG challenges ahead. We are thankful for all your support. #GOBIGORGOHOME
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