Owen “smooya” Butterfield left the “fnatic” roster, receiving the status of a free agent. The British esports player, now 22 years old, was released from his contractual obligations to the organization after being on the bench for just over a week.
Fnatic management decided to change the composition of the roster at the end of February, on the eve of the open qualifying stage of PGL Major Antwerp. The place of smooya was taken by Julian "regali" Harjau, who previously played for fnatic Rising.
Butterfield joined fnatic last October after the departure of Jack "jackinho" Mattson's ström. With his participation, the team successfully performed at REPUBLEAGUE TIPOS Season 2 and DreamHack Open November. Despite the initial successes, smooya was unable to show stable results, and at the beginning of 2022 its results deteriorated noticeably. This was evidenced by his rating, which decreased from 1.22 to 1.01.
After fnatic's poor performance at IEM Katowice, smooya was benched. While his place in the main roster was taken by regali, Butterfield managed to take part in the Benched Heroes project, and also temporarily replaced one of the players in the British team Into the Breach. Now smooya plans to consider offers from other teams, but no specifics about his future intentions are yet known.
