We thought Christmas was when Jesus was born, not when he got benched by his Counter-Strike team.

Okay, sorry, that was really poor. But seriously, we love Christmas, and we also love Jame, so this news out of Virtus.pro has really put a dampener on our festivities.

After their early exit from the Major, we all knew that a change would coming from VP, but this was probably the one thing that we didn’t want to happen.

Of course, there were plenty of calls for Jame to be the one removed, and plenty of positive reactions to it, but our displeasure at his benching isn’t just because we like the bloke - we genuinely think it’s a bad idea.

Jame was, and still should be, the identity of this team. Their playstyle was the perfect evolution of the “ruination” of Counter-Strike that began with Astralis in 2018. But unlike Astralis, we didn’t hate it. In fact, we loved it, probably because everyone else hated it.

However, that style was compromised long ago and throughout 2024 it was bastardised even further by the arrival of electroNic. Who, just for the sake of clarity, we would have removed from this team long before even considering Jame’s departure.

You can say what you want about Jame’s style not being suited to MR12, but Jame’s style hasn’t been suited to his team for a long time and we don’t think that’s his fault. Jame’s style works best when he has two soldiers on his team, and he hasn’t had that since Qikert was benched for mir last year.

electroNic’s arrival was meant to remedy that, to make up for the compromised system by adding more firepower. But he hasn’t done that.

Instead, all electroNic has seemed to do is destabilise the team. Much like Cloud9 before VP, the team crumbled around the former NAVI man, and we’re starting to think that might be more than just coincidence.

Blame Jame all you like, but we truly believe he hasn’t yet had a fair crack at CS2. He’s a fine AWPer and one of the greatest IGLs in history, his skills aren’t something that just vanished overnight.

With faltering players and a team clearly lacking chemistry, what was he meant to do? Well, like many before him, all he could do was accept being the scapegoat, but at least he got a parting blow on electroNic.

We truly hope we see Jame back on a server again soon, and we know whatever team he finds himself on will improve because of his presence. In the meantime, we also know that he’ll find plenty of ways to, er, ‘entertain’ himself.