CS:GO Legend Stewie2k Ready to Go Pro in Valorant

November 20, 2022

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North American Counter-Strike: Global Offensive legend Jake "Stewie2k" Yip stated recently during one of his streams on Twitch.tv that he is considering going pro in Riot Games' first-person shooter Valorant. He claims to even have received a few offers from a few teams.

After a series of poor performances as the head of Evil Geniuses' revitalized North American CS:GO roster, Stewie2k was benched from the team back in July and has since begun streaming and climbing the ranks on Valorant's North American leaderboards. This has left fans wondering: Will Stewie2k go pro in Valorant, or does he intend to make a return to competitive Counter-Strike?

Stewie2k emerged on the competitive esports scene back in 2016 as part of North American organization Cloud9. Despite serious criticism and doubt regarding his unique style of gameplay, Stewie2k quickly reached heights never-before-seen for North American Counter-Strike. In 2018, Stewie2k and Cloud9 became the first and only ever North American team to win a Counter-Strike Major Championship, as they defeated FaZe Clan in the grand finals of the ELEAGUE Major: Boston 2018. Stewie2k would carry that success over to his new team, Team Liquid, who he helped in 2019 to become only the 2nd team ever at the time to win the $1,000,000 Intel Grand Slam, including winning ESL: One Cologne, one of CS:GO's most prestigious tournaments.

Team Liquid won ESL: One Cologne 2019 3-1 over Team Vitality, securing the 2nd ever Intel Grand Slam win in just 63 days.

After being unable to reach the same heights with Team Liquid in 2020 and 2021, Stewie2k would part ways with the organization for Evil Geniuses at the start of 2022, with hopes to revitalize a dying North American Counter-Strike scene. Stewie would team up with his former Cloud9 teammates Timothy "autimatic" Ta and William "RUSH" Wierzba, who he had won the 2018 Boston Major with. Though the team had high hopes for the new roster, Evil Geniuses failed to live up to the hype and strung together a series of disappointing results. Despite all of his past success, Stewie2k received serious criticism for both his leadership abilities and his gameplay, where he scored an abysmal 0.55 rating against the top 5 teams in the world. After just 6 months into the new Evil Genuises project, Stewie2k was benched from the team in July of 2022, left to be a streamer and content creator for Evil Geniuses.

Despite high hopes for the project, Stewie2k would be benched from Evil Geniuses' CS:GO team in July 2022; the project was considered a failure.

Now, as a streamer, many are left wondering what the North American legend will do next. When asked by one of his Twitch viewers if he would ever consider going pro in Valorant, Stewie2k replied "F— yeah I would... I'm just deciding if I want to go pro right now." On another occasion he noted, "I don't think I'm in a rush to join a team right now. I think stepping away from competitive as a whole is a pretty good break for me... Maybe in the future I'll go back to compete again." As of right now, Stewie2k is just trying to focus on streaming and getting better at Valorant. Only time will tell what the future hold for Stewie2k as he continues his break and recuperates. But one thing is for certain: Stewie2k loves to compete.