Unlike Evil Geniuses, ENCE are a beloved organisation in Counter-Strike. A plucky little team from Finland, they've twice captivated hearts to such a degree that we even forgive them for that God-awful EZ4ENCE song.

That's why, as ENCE have declared bankruptcy, we won't be celebrating their loss in the same way we did as that awful NA org.

A sad loss for the Counter-Strike scene

ENCE first rose to power in modern times around the same time as EG did, with Aleksib leading a team of sergej, Aerial, xseven, and Allu to the IEM Katowice 2019 Major final and the BLAST Pro Series Madrid 2019 trophy, an event where they even beat prime Astralis in the final.

Of course, this was soon following by Allu's big balls trolling everyone and convincing them to bench Aleksib, but look, we'll forget about that for now.

ENCE would drop off in the years that followed, but the arrivals of sAw and then Snappi saw the team reinvented, falling in line with the international meta and becoming a hotbed for young, unproven talent to make their first dent in the tier one circuit.

Some of them were rubbish - looking at you, dycha - and others failed to make that much of a mark outside of ENCE, like hades and maden, but we wouldn't have NertZ, SunPayus, or Spinx without the Snappi and sAw ENCE run, and the three of them have provided us with plenty of joy, anger, and comedy over the last few years.

That run would see Snappi also lift the only tier one trophy of his career - IEM Dallas 2023 - where ENCE beat MOUZ 2-0 in the final and played their iconic 31-28 Ancient decider in the semis against FaZe.

However, the team would fall apart later that year, with no one benefitting from the eventual moves they would make: Snappi, maden, and SunPayus were all out of Falcons in a year, NertZ and sAw did just okay on a HEROIC who were affected by degster's visa issues, and sole survivor dycha saw himself nosedive down the rankings after the utterly bizarre, gla1ve-led Polish ENCE were signed.

Failure to qualify for Majors and the subsequent loss of sticker money or meaningful player sales hurt ENCE, with a series of profitable years quickly being followed by years of big losses. In 2025 alone, ENCE almost lost close to a million Euros.

It's a sad tale, especially given how the two rises of ENCE were excellent examples of why Counter-Strike's open circuit has always held it above other esports with their franchising and partner leagues.

However, we hope that someone may appear to bail ENCE out in the future with a more sustainable model, although we do have worries that the impacts of VRS and the new Major stickers may mean that this bankruptcy becomes the norm for the next couple of years.