What’s gone wrong with GamerLegion?
GamerLegion entered Stage 1 of the StarLadder Budapest Major 2025 as one of the favourites to progress from the first Stage, but ultimately slumped to a 1-3 exit.
In a difficult season, it had seemed that the roster had turned the corner after a fourth-placed finish at PGL Masters Bucharest, finishing 4th after wins against FlyQuest, Fnatic, Gentle Mates, and Heroic.
However, their chastening Major performance dismissed that concept wholesale. Upset losses in the Best of 1s against Fluxo and Red Canids put GamerLegion on the brink of elimination on Day 1.
A win against Rare Atom set up a tough match-up against an in-form Parivision, with GamerLegion losing in two overtime contests to disappointingly fall out of the Major.
Their elimination from Stage 1 is a bitter pill to swallow for the roster, but in truth is more reflective of their strugglesome season.
So what’s gone wrong with GamerLegion?
Is GamerLegion’s talent pipeline drying up?
There is a temptation when reviewing GamerLegion to focus solely on everything outside of the server. GamerLegion has benefited from a pipeline of talent, which Ashley ‘ash’ Battye lined up for the roster.
ash’s success rate for those pickups has been remarkably consistent in that he has signed players that have delivered for the organisation, who have often gone on to be sold, likely at a healthy profit.
Mihai ‘iM’ Ivan, Kamil ‘siuhy’ Szkaradek, and Timur ‘FL4MUS’ Marev can be understood to be in that category.
The ability of a relatively small organisation to consistently scout and secure that level of talent is always questionable, especially if teams like FaZe or Furia are looking to Tier 3 for solutions to their own roster issues.
Yet that is potentially more of a future issue for GamerLegion than a current one.
The GamerLegion core has been linked with 100 Thieves, to join former FaZe veteran Håvard ‘rain’ Nygaard as the org returns to Counter-Strike; GamerLegion’s CEO went on to deny that any discussion regarding transfers has taken place.
Despite that denial, the common community sentiment remains that GamerLegion’s core is one of the most attractive to build around in Tier 1, and that GamerLegion may, once again, suffer from their talents departing when the Winter player break transfer period begins.
We can clearly see that one aspect is at odds with the other. If GamerLegion have been reduced to barebones by transfers, why are their core so seemingly valuable?
GamerLegion’s core is extremely talented, specifically the rifling core of Oldřich ‘PR’ Nový, Fredrik ‘REZ’ Sterner, and Sebastian ‘Tauson’ Lindelof have the potential to be the core of a top 10 team.
The proof of that already exists, as GamerLegion claimed that ranking in the VRS during May and June, sitting between 8-12th in the VRS rankings.
PR was arguably the best rookie in the first half of the year, prior to Danil ‘molodoy’ Golubenko’s continued growth, propelling Furia to four trophies in five events. REZ outperformed expectations, with huge impact upon his signing.
Tauson looked the weakest of the three in the first half of the year, but has raised his game to average 1.09 in the last 3 months.
GamerLegion may have to worry about the future of their roster if they do sell their core, but for now, their three central riflers are a strong pack.
From a rifling core perspective, they still have a great foundation for success. So why are they doing so badly?
GamerLegion’s AWPing issue
The elephant in the room is that the talent pipeline does not exist for AWPers. GamerLegion have been blessed in a sense to have not had their AWPer poached in recent years.
It was a relatively stable part of their roster for a long time, only suffering from one change from August 2022 until June 2025, with Henrich ‘sl3nd’ Hevesi replacing BLAST Paris Major 2023 finalist, Frederik ‘acoR’ Gyldstrand.
A regression in form saw sl3nd replaced in June, quickly followed by the benching of his replacement, Frederik ‘Kursy’ Gyldstrand, who never looked up to speed with Tier 1.
GamerLegion left the major only 73 days into their experiment with new AWPer, Milan ‘hypex’ Polowiec, who has not been a statistical improvement from Kursy, despite appearing somewhat more stable in the server.
That’s three AWPers in six months, and not a huge run-in to the Major. The disruption to the roster as a result should not be underestimated.
In an interview with Esports News UK, Janko ‘YNk’ Paunović points to that disruption as a potential motivation killer for the remainder of GL’s roster:
“I think to some extent it’s just the constant changes and not having consistency with the lineup, right? Every time a new player joins, you have to go through the call-outs with him. He has to learn how you default. He has to learn the basics.
For some of these other players, they’re repeating it for like the fifth time with a new player. So it’s a bit of a hit on motivation early on.” – Janko ‘YNk’ Paunović
As such, the GamerLegion roster may be struggling with the latent AWPing issue. Worst of all, the issue is not settled in any substantive sense.
The number of AWPers with an unambiguously positive impact on the server in Counter-Strike 2’s current state could be counted on one hand.
Furia’s scoop up of molodoy points to the fact that rosters are willing to look deeper into Tier 2 and 3 to find that next potential AWPer who can have that positive impact, as the potential upside often outweighs the mediocre stats that Tier 1 AWPers are showing.
That means GamerLegion will face competition when trying to pursue another AWPer, if they choose to do so.
The concept that GamerLegion may pursue another change at AWP was parodied by benched AWPer, sl3nd, upon GamerLegion’s exit.
With strong AWPers so few and far between, GamerLegion may have to find a solution for their issue that keeps hypex in the roster.
What do the stats reveal about GamerLegion’s regression?
We can glean some understanding of GamerLegion’s woes by looking at stats in the last three months, in comparison to GL’s high-water mark in the three months of March-May.
GamerLegion’s CT-side success has remained static, sitting at 50.1% and 50.2% during those timeframes.
That comes despite the buffs to the CT-side that have meant the average CT-side win percentage has gone up significantly from the first half of the year.
The first half of the year featured a largely T-sided meta, with the heavily T-sided map of Anubis featuring in the map pool.
The second half of the year saw a boost to the CT-economy in the form of the $50 kill reward for CTs. Additionally, the CT incendiary grenade got a small buff in the speed at which it spreads.
The replacement of Anubis with Overpass has also had a substantive effect on the averages. G2 and Mouz are amongst the most affected teams, boosting their CT win percentages by over 10%.
The changes flipped all seven active duty maps to be CT-sided amongst the Top 30, with only Train, Nuke, and Mirage being CT-sided in the first half of the year.
GamerLegion has been stagnant in that sense, despite playing Overpass as their first pick in the majority of vetoes.
Additionally, their T-sides have collapsed from 48.2% in March-May to 44.5% in the last 3 months, significantly lowering their position relative to their opposition.
Individually, REZ’s inability to have an impact on the T-side has been noteworthy, going from a 1.12 average HLTV rating to just 1.01, with Tauson’s improvement not compensating for a lack of opening success.
REZ’s unexpected success in the first part of the year papered over the bitter loss of FL4MUS to the roster, who did outstanding work to open up rounds for GamerLegion in 2024.
Now those numbers are not there, they are struggling to create openings, being the 28th-ranked team of the Top 30 in terms of opening kill percentage on the T side.
In terms of maps, GamerLegion’s most notable regressions have come on Nuke and Ancient, with their CT-side win percentage on Nuke falling below 50% on the traditionally CT-sided map.
On Ancient, the struggles are wholesale, dropping from 57.8% CT winrate to just 44.5%, and dropping from a 55.6% T-round win percentage to just 40.4%.
The result is that the once comfortable map for GamerLegion has been a sore spot for the roster, dropping to only a 30% winrate on a map they once had a formula for success on.
It is fitting then that their elimination came on that map to Parivision, with a Nuke loss to Fluxo and a Train loss to Fluxo putting them on the edge of elimination in the first place.
Overall, the underlying stats for GamerLegion display a lack of a comfortable map pool, in spite of the four players apart from the AWP being together all year.
GamerLegion’s inquest into their Major exit will start immediately, but what the season reflects is that GamerLegion’s Stage 1 exit did not come out of nowhere.
Their underlying statistics have significantly regressed from their peak in the first season, with GL suffering from similarly early exits at IEM Cologne, EWC, and CAC.
While the AWPing issue is the roster’s clearest struggle, including the structural issues that issue may cause, their T-side struggles show that it is not the only issue present within the roster.
Having extended his contract with GamerLegion in April, ash may face one of his toughest tests yet in finding solutions for this GamerLegion roster.
Worst of all, he may not be given the chance to continue to work with a rifling core that had brought them to such great heights earlier in the year.
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