M80, a developing North American esports group best known for its VALORANT Challengers team, is planning an ambitious expansion to CS2. Donald “Syyko” Muir, the former head coach of the VALORANT Sentinels and XSET, was announced by M80 on June 15 as their vice president of esports. Along with the tactical shooter project from Riot Games, M80 is funding Rainbow Six Siege and Rocket League teams as well as Street Fighter pro EndingWalker.
And Syyko has nothing but big plans for M80’s entry in CS2, which Valve will release worldwide this summer and effectively replace CS:GO.
“In addition to supporting these existing rosters, I have sights set on Counter-Strike 2, and plan to build a world-class roster,” Syyko said in an interview with Dexerto.
It remains unclear, though, whether M80 is aiming to build a roster mostly consisting of NA players or if it will explore opportunities overseas. M80’s VALORANT roster features four NA players, the Rocket League team is fully NA, but the Rainbow Six lineup is mostly composed of Brazilian players.
Either way, this brings hope for the NA scene in CS esports. Team Liquid, Complexity, and Evil Geniuses are the only big organizations fielding NA rosters at the moment and Cloud9 is currently fielding a roster mostly made of Russian players. Most of the organizations in the region pivoted to VALORANT esports after its launch in 2020 and never came back to CS.
Apart from M80, TSM is the only other notable organization in NA teasing to join Valve’s FPS, but there were no more updates after the organization’s financial struggles became public in March 2023.