After just over four months, AWPer Owen “smooya” Butterfield has made his exit from the Fnatic Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (CS:GO) team, who had a lackluster showing at IEM Katowice 2022. This marks the fourth org that smooya has joined in the last two years since his departure from BIG, and he has never lasted more than half a year on any of those teams.

Smooya joined Fnatic back in October 2021 on a three-month trial, taking the spot of Jack “Jackinho⁠” Ström. The British CS:GO player initially looked like a right fit for the squad, making immediate impact. He put up impressive individual performances with a 1.22 rating and helped Fnatic secure victories in various tournaments including DreamHack Open November.

Come the turn of the new year, however, smooya's individual rating sunk to 1.01 this 2022. Fnatic's team results also suffered, though it wasn't necessarily because of smooya's drop in quality alone. The squad reached the group stage of IEM Katowice, beating G2 Esports. However, they were unable to progress any farther in the competition, crashing out of the tourney after successive losses to FaZe Clan and Astralis.

Following the disappointing results, Smooya was benched. He was unable to represent Fnatic in the European Regional Major Ranking (RMR) open qualifiers. Instead, AWPer Iulian “⁠regali⁠” Harjău moved to the main roster from Fnatic Rising, the Academy squad. Upon his benching, smooya joined a mixed team to participate in open qualifiers, but they have yet to book a ticket to the PGL Antwerp Major Europe RMR.

Since departing BIG in early 2020, for whom he played for nearly two whole years, smooya has hopped between teams from Chaos to c0ntact Gaming to Movistar Riders to Fnatic, but now finds himself a free agent yet again.