Owen «smooya» Butterfield has left the «fnatic»roster as a free agent. The British cyber athlete, now 22 years old, has been released from his contractual obligations to the organization after spending just over a week in the reserves.
The fnatic management decided to change the roster at the end of February, on the eve of the PGL Major Antwerp Open Qualifier. Julian «regali» Hariau, who previously played for fnatic Rising, took smooya's place.
Butterfield joined fnatic last October, following the departure of Jack «jackinho» Strom Mattson. With his participation, the team successfully performed at REPUBLEAGUE TIPOS Season 2 and DreamHack Open November. Despite initial successes, smooya was unable to show consistent results, and its performance deteriorated markedly in early 2022. This was evidenced by his rating dropping from 1.22 in to 1.01.
After fnatic's disappointing performance at IEM Katowice, smooya was sent to the reserves. While his place in the main roster was taken by regali, Butterfield managed to take part in the Benched Heroes project, as well as temporarily replace 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 known yet.