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British CSGO player Owen ‘smooya’ Butterfield has joined Chaos Esports Club.
He has left Berlin International Gaming (BIG) Clan, after being with the side for almost two years, having joined them back in spring 2018.
smooya has relocated to Arizona in North America and will be playing for his new team there full-time.
He said on Twitter:
smooya’s time with BIG was not always smooth. He moved to bench himself in early 2019 saying that he felt BIG would be better with another player to fill his role, as he said he never really had the main AWP role since being with the team.
He was then hit with a FaceIT Pro League temporary ban days after announcing plans to leave BIG Clan.
Back then, smooya said: “My main focus would be wanting to move to America full time so I can really work on my craft and have zero distractions outside of the game.”
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Now he’s got his goal, smooya recently opened up in an honest interview with HLTV.
Specifically, he mentioned how he’s trying to adopt a new change in attitude.
smooya told HLTV that after he left BIG and saw them do badly at a Major, he still had no offers from anyone.
“I was just chilling and thinking and I remembered my grandad, who never saw me game and was a big figure in my life,” smooya said. “He always used to tell me the generic ‘treat people the way you want to be treated, this, that and the other’. He passed away when I was 12 or 13, I was pretty young, so I remembered it, but it didn’t hit me that hard until I thought about it that one day.
“I thought if my grandad saw the way I was acting online and the way I was treating people, he wouldn’t be happy, so I told myself, from this day, I change!”
smooya, Chaos Esports Club
“I walked downstairs and said to my mum, ‘I’m a nice guy now,’ and she started laughing, like, ‘Owen, you’re literally a piece of shit, what are you talking about?’ [laughs], and I said, ‘No, mum, I promise, I have to,’ so day by day I’ve been minding my manners, saying ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ to every single person.”
smooya also said he’s been socializing more, going to the gym and becoming a more confident person, a journey he is taking day-by-day.
It seems it’s a new start for smooya as the new year gets underway – let’s see what he’s capable of with his new team.
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Dom is an award-winning writer and finalist of the Esports Journalist of the Year 2023 award. He graduated from Bournemouth University with a 2:1 degree in Multi-Media Journalism in 2007.
As a long-time gamer having first picked up the NES controller in the late ’80s, he has written for a range of publications including GamesTM, Nintendo Official Magazine, industry publication MCV and others. He worked as head of content for the British Esports Federation up until February 2021, when he stepped back to work full-time on Esports News UK and offer esports consultancy and freelance services. Note: Dom still produces the British Esports newsletter on a freelance basis, so our coverage of British Esports is always kept simple – usually just covering the occasional press release – because of this conflict of interest.
