Week 28: Top Esports Headlines

FACEIT will begin Season 9 on August 5 with a soft Elo reset that applies to all accounts and requires players to complete 10 placement matches to regain a rank. The platform described the reset as “soft” after a stricter reset at the start of Season 8, and it opened a community vote on restoring half-time voice chat between opposing teams for the first week of the new season.

BLAST revealed the draft order for Bounty Season 2, with 3DMAX holding the first overall pick in the 32-team event. A live draft show is scheduled for Friday at 17:00, and the bottom 16 seeds will select opponents ahead of the online stage that starts on July 21.

At ESL Challenger League Season 52 Europe Cup 1, fnatic won the cup by beating SPARTA, BRUTE and HOTU in the playoffs. The team earned $4,000 and a spot in the Season 52 Europe Finals. Artem “cairne” Mushynskyi posted a tournament-high 1.48 average rating across 12 maps and a 2.24 rating in the final, which included a 13-0 win on Ancient. New signing Volodymyr “mazay” Iorhachov averaged a 1.04 rating in the event.

NRG won FRAG St. Clair, defeating SportsBetExpert 3-1 in the grand final with head coach Damian “daps” Steele acting as an in-game stand-in. NRG recently signed Håkon “hallzerk” Fjærli as their AWPer and reinstated Jeorge Endicott. Aran “Sonic” Groesbeek posted a tournament-best 1.64 rating for the team.

The United Kingdom roster for the Europe West qualifier of the Esports Nations Cup was announced for the July 17–19 qualifier. The lineup includes Oscar “AZUWU” Bell, Jack “Gizmy” von Spreckelsen, Cai “CYPHER” Watson, Owen “smooya” Butterfield, Sebastian “volt” Maloș (dual citizen), Marco “MMS” Salomone and coach Max “MiGHTYMAX” Heath. Four main-event slots will be decided among teams from Belgium, Germany, Luxembourg, Spain, Denmark, Iceland, Netherlands, Sweden, Finland, Ireland, Norway, Switzerland, France, Italy and Portugal.

A small update pushed overnight upgraded community maps Fachwerk, Boulder, Shelter and El Dorado to their latest workshop versions. The patch also included stability and security fixes aimed at improving map performance and player safety.

Freddy “KRIMZ” Johansson said he had been preparing to retire before Jesper Wecksell persuaded him to continue. He described enjoying the game again and cited social aspects as important: “The most important thing for me was to have fun again and then I enjoy it, I really enjoy it and then I can do a lot on the server. I was going to retire, so it was a fun couple of conversations with Mr. Jesper Wecksell.”

FACEIT earlier imposed a stricter Elo reset at the start of Season 8 to target accounts holding inflated ranks after inactivity and to curb top-end Elo inflation. The Season 9 soft reset uses placement matches rather than wide adjustments to scores while aiming to reflect current player performance on leaderboards.