CS:GO is a game of skill and teamplay, so finding the proper blend of roles and personalities in a squad is always going to be the key to success.
Not all roster changes work out, though, and sometimes the best choice is to part ways as quickly as possible. If nothing else, at least some of the damage can be mitigated that way. Still, the disappointment (and the memes) linger long after the benching.
Here are the worst CS:GO roster moves from this year.
Worst CS:GO roster changes in 2022
Junior to Complexity
FURIA fans could have instantly told you that Paytyn “junior” Johnson isn’t the AWPer you’re looking for if you want to have an impactful sniper in your squad. Still, you could have chalked up his failures could to the communication issues with a primarily Brazilian core, if not for the fact that the fragging numbers were never really there against top-tier opposition.
Complexity found this out in 2022 at their own expense, picking up the North American early in the year and bombing out of all key tournaments in the process. Junior’s individual rating 2.0 stat plummeted as low as 0.81 by August, and his replacement, Håkon “hallzerk” Fjærli, has proven to be a clear upgrade.
CS:GO enthusiasts will remember junior for his interviews, be it calling Complexity the best North American team in March before bombing out of the ESL Pro League groups with a 1-4 scoreline, or when he said that his playstyle is ” how I think most snipers should be playing with the AWP.”
Shox to Liquid
We’re skewing the timeline here a little bit, but surely this move qualifies. The Frenchman is a legend of the game, but his transfer to a struggling North American side never really made sense. His best days were clearly behind him by the time he made the grand leap to the other side of the Atlantic, and all factors seemed to work against him during his time with Liquid.
From communication challenges to role clashes and the issues of split commitments in France and the US doomed the idea from the start, and if shox’s recent benching on Apeks is anything to go by, the firepower also wasn’t really there by the time he donned the famous dark-horsed shirt. Since then, Liquid struck gold with YEKINDAR, so it’s not all bad for fans of North American CS, even if the first part of the year was a period they will all look to forget.
Aleksib to G2
Perhaps this is a controversial choice. Perhaps Aleksi is not to blame for the struggles of G2. Perhaps his replacement, HooXi, will still turn out to be a memer rather than a leader. Regardless of what the future holds for the two parties, the Finn’s time on G2 still represents a spectacular error in recruitment and judgment.
A heavily system-based in-game leader who took the path to greatness with ENCE, a team of relatively weak players forged into something more than a sum of their parts, tossed into a team of big fraggers and even bigger egos, with little balance to be found. Worse yet, then-coach Rémy ”XTQZZZ“ Quoniam also had a very different outlook on the game, and though they both had to fall on their swords, it only makes the Aleksib pickup even more baffling in retrospect.
Stewie2K to Evil Geniuses
What a sad way to end a career. Stewie played a huge part in Cloud9’s miraculous title charge in Boston and the “smoke criminal” was a key member of the Grand Slam-winning Liquid roster. Once that squad began to flounder, so did Stewie himself, and as internal tensions began to ramp up, he jumped ship to helm Evil Geniuses’ new project as the in-game leader.
It turned out to be a catastrophic idea with terrible results and even worse performances to follow, coupled with bust-ups with coaches and temper tantrums on streams. He tried to engineer a grand escape to greener pastures in VALORANT, but no team has picked him up yet, so he continues to create content for the org that is currently trying to juggle not one, not two, but three different interchangeable rosters of mediocrity–none of which could find a use for him in the end.
