Cloud9 Mixwell explains why he’s leaving the CSGO roster

On December 19, Óscar ‘mixwell’ Cañellas announced that he would be stepping back from the Cloud9 active CSGO roster, and pursuing opportunities with new organizations. The Spanish star revealed why its time for him to move on.

In January 2018, Cloud 9 climbed the highest peak there is to climb in Counter-Strike: capturing victory at Valve-sponsored major. The moment was made even sweeter by winning the ELEAGUE major in thrilling fashion in front of raucous Boston homecrowd.

• Read more: Gen.G Esports announce new CSGO roster, featuring former C9 core

Months later, the core of that Boston roster would be gone, and now, less than two years later, the roster in its entirety is gone, and Cloud 9 is now hitting the reset button.

Another piece of the Cloud 9 puzzle is making his way out the door as well, as mixwell announced on December 19 he’d be leaving Cloud 9 and pursuing opportunities elsewhere in 2020.

In a reply on Twitter, Mixwell said that the move to Cloud9 was a risk in his viewpoint, and that the risk “didn’t pay off.” However, he says that he did learn alot from his experience on C9.

In moving to Cloud9 in July of this year, it marked a return to the North American scene in which mixwell established himself as potential star-in-the-making years ago. In April 2016, he joined OpTic Gaming for nearly a two-year campaign, during which he emerged as an extremely talented AWPer with world-class potential. 

• Read more: OpTic CSGO roster completely disbands amid organizational confusion

Prior to Cloud9’s Boston major victory, many fans expected that the OpTic roster would be the ones to break through and emerge as the dominant NA team, and results like their ELEAGUE Season 2 win over Astralis pushed that narrative forward. 

However, consistent shortcomings at majors stalled the team’s momentum, and after the NA members of the roster left or were transferred, the all-European version of OpTic fell apart as quickly as it started. Mixwell joined G2 on trial, but was unable to help G2 improve results, and didn’t secure a starting spot.

Mixwell joined C9 after a year with Spanish squad Movistar Riders, but the late-2019 version of the C9 showed almost no signs of growth, failing to qualify for ECS or ESL Pro League finals, and finishing their year in November with a winless showing at BLAST Copenhagen.

During his tenure with C9, Mixwell posted a positive KD ratio that led the team alongside Timothy ‘autimatic’ Ta, but the 1.02 rating was his lowest over an extended period of time for him since 2015. In 2016, for example, he averaged a 1.2 KD across the whole year.

Cloud9’s future in CSGO is currently a question mark in addition to mixwell’s, having just transferred the core of their roster to Gen.G in December.