At the end of the week, fnatic announced the signing of Owen «smooya» Butterfield, who announced his retirement from Movistar Riders. The British cyber athlete spent about eight months as part of the Brazilian team. His deal with fnatic is still temporary: the contract is for three months, with an option to extend it if smooya's work with the team proves successful.
The Brit will take the place of Jack «Jackinho» Strom Mattson, who was sent to inactivation last Saturday after fnatic finished IEM Fall in last place and as a result failed to qualify for PGL Major Stockholm. Thus, fnatic continues to build an international roster after having abandoned the idea of using a roster that would include exclusively Swedish players some time ago. Since August, in addition to smooya, other Brits have appeared in the team.
In his post about the transition to fnatic, the player said that he had been waiting for such a chance for many years and thanked the team management for believing in him. Butterfield will play his first official match as a member of fnatic next week, at the second round of qualifiers for IEM Winter.