Irish esports organisation Wylde, which is backed by Usain Bolt, picked up a first-place victory at the Gamers Without Borders 2022 Rainbow Six Siege Europe charity tournament on the weekend.
Their all-German roster beat Rogue 3-1 in the grand final, giving Wylde $250,000 in winnings for Unicef. Fourth-place Heroic also won $50,000 for the charity.
Second-place Rogue won $125,000 for the UN Refugee Agency and third-place UK org Victus also won $75,000 for that charity.
There was a solid mix of UK esports talent in the Europe event, with LeonGids playing for Rogue, Grizzly and Sloth with Heroic, and YZN, oscr and Skeptic on UK esports organisation Victus.
UK desk talent also included AceOfPyrite, Dezachu, XRTROIKA, Demo and Fresh.
Heroic and Rogue were invited to the tournament, but Wylde and Victus made it through the open qualifier.
This qualifier also featured UK orgs MNM and Viperio, who made it to the quarter finals.
‘We’ve shown really good promise against some of the best competition in EU’ – Victus on their incredible run
UK esports organisation turned heads at the Gamers Without Borders Rainbow Six Siege Europe tournament after making a great run and pulling off several upsets.
We caught up with Victus CEO James Yexley who filled us in on their performances and story, including their third-place finish and winning $75,000 for charity. James is also a student on the University of Chichester’s esports degree course, and recently was a part of its first student-run CSGO esports event.
Victus’ roster consists of YZN, oscr and Skeptic from the UK, as well as Russian player skiteyyy and Portuguese player Flexy. Coach Jakesouthster and analyst Dai are also from the UK.
“The open qualifiers were announced the day before it was scheduled to start. We signed up on that night, got a bye in the round of 64, then won our first game against Team Coalesce and beat Mazoku,” James said.
“The second day of open qualifiers consisted of two big match-ups for us, but one of our players Flexy locked himself out of his house which meant we had to play with our analyst Dai. We still managed to beat ‘Die 5 von der Tanke’ and most impressively, the recently dropped roster of Empire, who were deemed to be the second best roster in the world after their most recent performance at the 2022 Six Invitational.“
“The guys have all shown really good promise against some of the best competition in EU. We’ll keep our heads up and make sure we work as hard as we can to ensure we’re the next contender in EUCL.”
YZN, Victus
James continued: “Our first match of the European Finals was against Rogue, which we weren’t expected to win AT ALL. But we proved our worth by beating them, not just once but in a full best of three.”
“The next day we played Wylde but narrowly lost in the third map, this was a big upset for us because it would’ve taken us to the grand finals with a one-map advantage against the winners from the lower bracket, but instead we were sent to the lower bracket finals to play the winner of Heroic and Rogue,” James explained.
“We then faced Rogue again, who beat Heroic, the number one rated team in Europe. We played two of the same maps as we first played against them, but won the map we originally lost, and lost the map we originally won. Both of these maps went to overtime and we lost narrowly 7-5 on the final map.
“We raised $75,000 for Refugees but had the potential to win the entire European finals and win $250,000 for charity instead – and move onto the $2m team prize pool LAN in Saudi Arabia.
“The team were gutted, but the massive upsets we cause gained us a lot of respect from pro players and teams in Rainbow Six. We’re now the favourites in a lot of people’s eyes to win Challenger League and become a pro team very soon in EUL.”
Team analyst Dai told Esports News UK: “The team can be very proud of showing the level of performance they did taking maps off tier-one teams, holding nothing back.
“They’ve shown they can compete at that level and we’ve had the experience to play best of three games for NPL which makes us a lot better for it. The teams we’ve played did well to spot gaps we know we can improve on for the rest of the season.”
Player YZN commented: “The guys have all shown really good promise against some of the best competition in EU. We’ll keep our heads up and make sure we work as hard as we can to ensure we’re the next contender in EUCL.”
So there we have it – Victus are one to watch in UK esports.
About Gamers Without Borders
The Gamers Without Borders charity esports initiative is put on by the Saudi Esports Federation. Some have accused Saudi Arabia of esportswashing – using esports and charity initiatives to generate positive PR and detract from their human rights record.
Earlier this year, Savvy Gaming Group (SGG), which is 100% owned by Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund – the Saudi government’s Public Investment Fund – acquired major esports tournament providers ESL and Faceit in a deal was criticised by some in the esports community.
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.
