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Published: October 26, 2023

Written by: Stefan Velikov

  • The 27-year-old player has decided to leave the competitive CS scene
  • He used to be one of Grayhound and later’s Renegades main players
  • His last tournament was IEM Sydney 2023, where he posted a respectable 1.06 rating

Liam “⁠malta⁠” Schembri has decided to end his seven-year-long career in professional Counter-Strike and amicably left his last team, VERTEX Esports after competing with them at IEM Sydney.

Malta Leaves CS

Professional esports players rarely have multiple decade-long careers, with a lot of them retiring around the age of 30 or even before that. Today former Grayhound and Renegades rifler Liam “⁠malta⁠” Schembri joins the ranks of the retirees as he has announced that he is withdrawing from competitive CS2.

The news comes from VERTEX Esports, the team the Australian pro player most recently played for. “It is with a heavy heart that today, we announce that malta will be stepping away from VERTEX and competitive Counter-Strike. Forever etched in CS history; Liam has been a pioneer for CS and esports within Australia,” the organization sent off their ow-former player, wishing him all the best in future endeavors.

With this, malta’s seven-year-long career in and around Australia’s best teams comes to an end. The player started his professional career in CS:GO back in 2015, playing for an organization called Aftermind. However, his real entry into pro CS was arguably in 2016 when he joined Chiefs Esports Club and for the next couple of years, he competed in various online and offline tournaments.

This was enough for malta to get noticed by Greyhound Gaming who offered the player a contract, which he quickly accepted. Over the next two years, he helped his team dominate in various online events, although the org did not manage to replicate that success in higher-level in-person tournaments.

Despite that, malta’s reputation grew, and he soon found himself signing a contract with Renegades. Over 2020-2021 he once again helped his team dominate more online tournaments in what was arguably the Australian player’s best period in competitive Counter-Strike. Unfortunately, his team once again did not perform too well in major CS events.

The last year and a half saw malta play for VERTEX with whom he attended various bigger events and helped the team perform rather well on most of them. He leaves professional CS with a bang after he and the team participated in IEM Sydney 2023, which FaZe won on Sunday. VERTEX left the tournament early at 13-16 place with malta posting a resectable 1.06 rating despite his team’s not-great performance.

“I’m glad I was able to catch up with so many people this past weekend at IEM,” malta wrote in a tweet. “It’s been an absolute blessing to play this game professionally but I need to move on and see what else there is in life!”

The player has not yet announced if he has any future plans, nor have VERTEX announced if they’ve found a replacement for him. The roster currently looks like this:

  • Toby “⁠BRACE⁠” Barnes
  • Jared “⁠hazr⁠” O’Bree
  • Jordan “⁠pz⁠” White
  • Christian “⁠ADDICT⁠” Pendleton
  • David “⁠Kingfisher⁠” Kingsford (coach)
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Stefan Velikov

Stefan is a well-versed gamer who loves every aspect of gaming - including its most competitive nature. He is bringing you the latest updates from the world of esports as he painstakingly tracks dozens of competitions. 

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1
Live odds: CS:GO

00:00 AM

Home

Away

Wil
NRG
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1.84

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02:30 AM

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BOS
1.75
1.95

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