Ever since the 28-year-old Major champion and MVP, and considered by many “G.O.A.T” of Counter-Strike – Oleksandr ‘s1mple’ Kotyliev, joined the ranks of BC.Game in July of 2025, the question on many’s lips was “Will this organization truly rebuild and assemble a world class roster to play alongside s1mple, and assist him on his conquest for redemption?”.
Well, throughout the last 5 months s1mple got to come back to playing regular Counter-Strike on the Tier 2/3 level, participating in 11 online tournaments, and averaging a 1.20 rating over 82 maps with the green jersey. The highlight of his first season with the team was BC.Game’s first place at the ESL Challenger League Season 50 Cup 2, where s1mple & co. took down teams like The Alliance, ESC, OG, and Sashi Esports, with the Ukrainian topping the individual charts on a 1.42 rating over 14 maps.
However, it was pretty obvious that this iteration of the lineup was not there to stay. Just 2 months after the blockbuster move, the team’s staff decided to pick up s1mple’s ex-teammate on NAVI who was recently benched by Virtus.pro – Denis ‘electroNic’ Sharipov. Unfortunately, he was far from the star rifler he used to be when himself and s1mple would dominate the scene with the Ukrainian organization in 2021.
And so, with s1mple & electroNic looking to get back to playing Tier 1 Counter-Strike, and BC.Game’s apparent moves and desire towards building a real contender, it quickly became more than obvious that there was no place for people like nexa, aNdu, CacaNito, and emi on the team – a rebuild was in place.
The SAW rebuild
On the third of January BC.Game announced that they had completed the signing of the SAW trio, consisting of veteran In-game-leader & Portuguese legend – Christopher “MUTiRiS” Fernandes, who arrived to the organization alongside youngsters – Adones “krazy” Nobre and António “aragornN” Barbosa, securing the core of a team that was, at the time, ranked 22nd in the global VRS.
The transfer, as unexpected as it was, made complete sense for BC.Game’s goals to acquire invites for bigger events, but that trio was definitely not the organization’s first choice. In the span of just mere weeks prior to the deal’s finalization, there was circulating rumours about BC.Game trying to land themselves the trio of Staehr, jabbi & HooXi/Magisk from Astralis, but the players allegedly were not exactly ecstatic about the idea of sharing the server with two of the biggest divas in Counter-Strike – s1mple & electroNic, especially considering their questionable individual level.
It is highly likely that BC.Game tried to negotiate with other team cores, but the only deal that seemed possible to come to life was the SAW one, which ended up giving us one of the weirdest compositions of players, which was later described by Esports Historian & Journalist – Duncan “Thorin” Shields, as a “VRS Frankestein monster”.
MUTiRiS’s system
However exciting it might be to follow the development of arragorN & krazy in this lineup, one of the most interesting topics regarding that deal was the addition of an experienced, heavily structured, and tactically oriented IGL such as MUTiRiS to a lineup with such strong, tenured players such as s1mple & electroNic.
Over the course of his career, the Portuguese leader has proven to be one of the best in terms of making “something out of nothing”. At a certain point I was convinced that no matter what group of four players from Portugal one would give to him, MUTiRiS would find a way to turn any group of rookies into a properly playing lineup. Something he was able to prove with notable runs at events like IEM Cologne 2024 (4th), and most recently at PGL Bucharest 2025 (3rd). It’s absolutely undeniable that his tactical approach, preparation for games, and ability to adapt and counter his opponents was on an extremely high level, but things change when you finally have superstars on the roster.
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Firstly, BC.Game is MUTiRiS’s first international project, and for such a talkative player, who also likes micromanaging a large portion of his players’ moves, communicating in English could be challenging. Moreover, for the first time in his career, he’d have to comply with the style of play that his new two stars would want to play.
The simple way to put all of this is – It’s nearly impossible to join a team with s1mple & electroNic and enforce your vision of the game on them, no matter who you are and whether you’ve got the accolades to back your name, or not.
In SAW, MUTiRiS would heavily rely on story’s aggression and opening qualities to set up the gameplan and kick start the team’s rounds. And even if s1mple has never been known to be a “passive AWP-er”, it’s fair to describe him as one that is great at punishing, but doing it in a flashy way, which creates the need of more aggressive moves from some of the rifles, especially on the T-side.
Thankfully for MUTiRiS, it seems like s1mple’s fully embraced the role of an aggressive AWP on the CT-sides, being responsible for 29.9% of the team’s opening duels over the course of the 9 maps they’ve played so far. And in terms of the T-sides, arragorN has made the transition to a hard entry, reaching 33.7% in opening duels attempts.
So far, it feels like BC.Game has been able to look and find a “middle ground”, where some tweaks have been added to the offense, and s1mple has been given the freedom and support to make plays and be the difference maker on the defense.
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Initial results
As mentioned already, at the time of writing this article, BC.Game has played just 9 official maps. The start, of course, was not ideal, as s1mple & co. experienced back-to-back losses to CIS sides – Ursa & Nemesis in the IEM Rio 2025 Closed Qualifier, trying to test things out with two different map picks – Anubis & Inferno, both of which they lost in close affairs.
However, even during his time on SAW, MUTiRiS has never been the most successful when it comes down to online qualifiers and ability to best Tier 3 teams with heavy firepower. Quite the opposite, SAW’s best results would often come at LAN events, especially ones that the team was not expected to do so well in, where MUTiRiS could unleash his tactical potential against bigger and better teams, which are often easier to research, prepare for, and understand.
In a similar fashion, s1mple’s proven that LAN CS is where we see the best of him, as opposed to the weekly and monthly online events like CCT, Nodwin & ECL. The true glimpses of potential were on show in BC.Game’s debut game in Stage 1 of the IEM Krakow 2027, where s1mple & co. completed a 2-11 reverse sweep on Overpass versus Legacy, followed by a dominant 13-1 on Inferno, which the GOAT himself closed out with a signature 1v4 clutch.
Good cohesion, proactive CS, great performances by s1mple, electroNic & arragorN, as well as some solid calling from MUTiRiS were exciting to see. Sadly, BC.Game followed up that game with a 0:2 loss to 3DMAX, which was nothing close to competitive, making it difficult to establish a consistent idea of what could be expected by the team.
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Conclusion
Like many others, the author of this article finds it difficult to believe that this team is anything but a trampoline back to LAN Counter-Strike for s1mple. The urgency and pure randomness of this deal, as well as the reputation of s1mple & electroNic’s affinity towards rarely staying away from the decision making on roster changes in their teams, makes it easy to see a world in which, unless this BC.Game, against all odds, succeeds, there will be more changes in the lineup in the coming months.
For what it’s worth, I’m not in complete disbelief that MUTiRiS & TaZ could be the right IGL & Coach combo to build the best possible environment and take BC.Game to a decent tactical/mental level. But as of today, it feels like the likelihood of both arragorN & krazy staying on this project unless results start coming pretty quickly, isn’t particularly high.
To conclude, this project is exciting for many reasons, but the potential for long-term progress might not be one of them. In that sense, this entire team might not be in the best position to become a successful and longstanding project, but what this move could do, is lay the foundations of a team that could provide both s1mple & electroNic with the necessary opportunities to prove that they are here to stay.
