BC.Game has announced the removal of rifler António ‘aragornN’ Barbosa and in-game leader Christopher ‘MUTIRIS’ Fernandes from its active Counter-Strike roster.
The benching follows months of poor performances, which saw the team slide from 23rd in the VRS rankings to 73rd in the current HLTV VRS live model, missing the IEM Cologne 2026 Major by a wide margin.
BC.Game’s end of an error
BC.Game purchased the core of the Portuguese roster SAW in January, securing MUTIRIS, aragornN, and Adones ‘krazy’ Nobre, thus securing the VRS ranking held by SAW at that time.
The deal was reportedly worth $2.5m according to insider leaker and Team Spirit scout, Alexey ‘OverDrive’ Biryukov.
What that money secured BC.Game was instant invites into Tier 1 competitions as the start of 2026, effectively skipping the Tier 2 grind and returning Oleksandr ‘s1mple’ Kostyliev and Denis ‘electroNic’ Sharipov to Tier 1.
After failing to qualify for IEM Rio 2026, the team dropped out of IEM Kraków 2026 in what turned out to be their most positive Tier 1 event, finishing last in the main event after progressing through Stage 1.
At that event, MUTIRIS spoke at length to ESL’s desk regarding the struggles within the team only a month into the project, stating, “For me, it’s like we are surviving. We are not here playing; it’s like we are surviving every day.”
The interview displayed the latent struggle for respect that the Portuguese IGL faced in the roster, noting that he required electroNic’s help to get s1mple’s faith in his calls.
From that highwatermark of finishing last in the IEM Kraków main event, things only got worse from there with unacceptable losses at local LANs to minnows, leading to the team withdrawing from Journey Spring, effectively giving up their slim changes at qualifying for the Major.
Instead, the team stated that their “full focus now is to fix our chemistry” in comments to HLTV, something which clearly failed as the demotivated roster looks just as disjointed and fractious at PGL Bucharest, where they only secured one win, against Voca, who had a stand-in.
The result seemingly brought about changes to the roster, but to say it broke the roster would not be accurate. The roster was never functional on a basic level.
Where do BC.Game go from here?
Now, after months of failure, that alleged sum of $2.5m has bought them absolutely nothing. The team now sits in a rank it had achieved last year with Nemanja ‘nexa’ Isaković and Andreas ‘aNdu’ Maasing.
Worst of all, buying the SAW core gave the roster no path for progress or development. Now deprived of the Portuguese wing of the team, it seems inevitable that krazy will also be removed at some stage.
Then all the roster is left with is s1mple and electroNic, two players they had secured by October of last year. A small fortune, wasted to spin wheels and go nowhere.
Now at a lowly rank again, the question arises of whether BC.Game will try the same gambit of buying a core to get them back in the invite bubble.
The two-player benching implies that BC.Game has learned its lesson and intends to find two players to grind up Tier 2 with and build synergy as a roster.
The issues is what players would work with s1mple and electroNic, who seemingly have found it difficult to find players they respect enough to play with who were not part of the 2021 PGL Stockholm 2021 Major winning NAVI team.
It may be that for BC.Game, the main quality they have to target is reputation in the scene, as they attempt to form a coherent roster.
Who do you think BC.Game should get to fill their vacant roster spots? Discuss that on our Discord!
For more CS news, see the details of ESL’s new deal with streaming platform Kick.
Darragh is an Esports Journalist for Insider Gaming specialising in Counter-Strike. He loves to explore how esports teams work, or why they very often do not.
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