One of the first VALORANT title winners and Counter-Strike veterans, Óscar “mixwell” Cañellas, has announced that he will step back from competition.
Mixwell was originally a CS: Source professional before making the switch to Global Offensive. While he competed under the banners of G2 and Cloud9 in CS later in his career, he’s most known in the esport for his exploits at OpTic Gaming. At OpTic, he won ELEAGUE Season 2, made the semifinals of IEM Sydney in 2017, and finished first in ESL Pro League’s sixth season in North America.
In 2020, mixwell was one of many CS:GO professional players who pivoted to the new Riot Games title, VALORANT. During the early days of VALORANT, mixwell finished third-fourth in the inaugural First Strike tournament and netted wins at Red Bull Homeground and the BLAST Twitch Invitational following a return to G2. While G2 was easily the best team in Europe in the early days of VALORANT, their shine quickly faded. The team struggled throughout 2021, and mixwell left to join Team Heretics in 2022.
While the twilight of his career certainly had some disappointing results, mixwell was one of the original European VALORANT studs and had a successful career in Counter-Strike. He’s still beloved by the OpTic Gaming Green Wall fanbase, and was instrumental in building a strong European VALORANT scene.
His retirement brought an outpouring of support. Giants Gaming thanked him for being a great “rival on the server,” and G2 left a heartwarming message for him, with several OpTic employees showing their support as well. In esports, it’s difficult to forge a career that has a lasting impact after the results fade into history, but mixwell has done just that: he’s one of the few esports players with a legacy, not just for in-the-server play, but for his actions outside of it as well.
