As a 15-year-old in 2012, Braxton Pierce was already living the life millions dream of but few can actually obtain. Under the gamertag "swag," Pierce was a professional video game player in one of the world's largest esports, the first-person shooting game Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. For tournaments, he would travel with his mother, older brother and other family members. His older competition towered over him physically, but he'd leave them broken and defeated in-game.
He was a prodigy from a region of the world, North America, that wasn't known to produce much high-caliber talent in the world of Counter-Strike. European teams dominated the game's international scene, with the rivalry between national teams from France and Sweden more prominent than any challenge from the other side of the Atlantic.
Pierce and the team he would eventually join, Team iBUYPOWER, wanted to change that narrative. Together, with Pierce's budding talent as he evolved from prodigy to superstar, they believed they could become world champions.
"We all just had very similar mindsets in that we really wanted to win," Pierce said. "We put all of our differences aside to make that happen, whether it be attitude or personality clashes, we'd just put that all to the side. We all understood [Counter-Strike] at a top level and had similar [beliefs] in how we thought the game should be played."
In 2014, Pierce approached his mother, who had supported his aspirations of being a professional video game player, to tell her something he needed to get off his chest. He had been caught match-fixing for profit. Team iBUYPOWER had played in a $10,000 tournament where during the online group stage they unexpectedly dropped a game to underdog side Team NetcodeGuides.com. Although iBUYPOWER would go on and win the entire event, an article by journalist Richard Lewis revealed that IBP captain Sam "DaZeD" Marine was a co-owner of the NetcodeGuides website, turning what appeared to be a peculiar upset into a full-blown scandal.
Less than two weeks following the article's publishing, Valve announced the results of an investigation -- Pierce and three of his teammates (DaZed, Keven "AZK" Larivière and Joshua "steel" Nissan) were indefinitely banned from all Valve-sponsored events in any capacity. The team's fifth member, Tyler "Skadoodle" Latham, was found to have declined to take any profits from the match-fixing and therefore left unscathed in the ruling.
"I was shocked and devastated that he could even be associated with what was unfolding," Vanessa Pierce, Braxton's mother, told ESPN. "It was just unbelievable what was happening. He had worked so unbelievably hard to get to the top, and in an instant it was all gone. Watching him go through the pain of losing everything he had worked so hard for was heartbreaking. It was a hard lesson with costly consequences."
What was supposed to be the beginning of Pierce's ascent had turned into a nightmare. He had poured thousands of hours into Counter-Strike, going to school groggy because he was up all night practicing, and he was left with nothing. The day following the announcement was almost worse. Instead of being told he was permanently banned from competing at the highest-level Counter-Strike events, Valve made it known it was "indefinite," leaving Pierce in a limbo of what to do next in his life.
Could the ban be a few weeks? A few months? A few years? Was "indefinite" simply a facade, a piece of false optimism for players banned in the scandal? Pierce was in purgatory, living out a bad dream where every day was one where he could hear something different regarding his future.
"My mind was just racing," Pierce said. "Am I going to have to get a real job? Am I going to have to quit gaming? All that stuff was running across my mind. I was obviously talking to some people and they told me to maybe appeal the ban, it was 'indefinite' so we didn't know how long it could be. So there was still hope, but for the first year, I was just hoping I'd get unbanned."
With a moniker such as "swag" and all that acclaim at a young age, it's easy to imagine Pierce as a boisterous, smack-talking teenager with a playstyle to match. It was actually the opposite, Pierce was introverted and quiet, praised for his intellect and knowledge of the game as a teenager more so than pure mechanics. Instead of yelling and fighting following his expulsion from playing in high-level events, he turned inward, transitioning into becoming a video game streamer online while waiting patiently to see whether Valve would overturn their decision.
"Something people may not know about Braxton is how bad it affected him at the time," his mother said. "It's something you can't go back and do over. He went into a severe depression for a while. He barely got out of bed for months."
Those days of waiting turned into weeks and eventually turned into a full year, still banned, watching from the sideline as major tournaments took place on Twitch, the same website he used to stream his gameplay. When asked what helped him get through those dark times, the days of barely getting out of bed, Pierce took time to think of an answer before replying, assured, "Counter-Strike."
Counter-Strike became one of the few constants in Pierce's life after he was introduced to the game as a 7-year-old. He was born in Charlotte before moving to Louisiana when he was around 5. That's where he lived until 2005 when Hurricane Katrina hit the state, destroying Pierce's house and pushing him back to North Carolina where his dad lived at the time. He's only recently moved back to Louisiana.
Through it all, though, he's had Counter-Strike. When something went sideways in his life, the game was there for him, his outlet into a place where he could block out the problems of real life for a few hours. All of the issues of the world dissolved into white noise when he slipped into a game.
It remained the same following the indefinite ban, but other things had changed. The game he loved so much was also an anchor pulling him down. He would play and stream the game, amassing a loyal following, but to Pierce, it wasn't the same. He was a competitor. He wanted to play for world titles and oversized checks, not sit alone in his room, beating players online in games that meant nothing and then hours later watching them play in high-stakes tournaments with millions watching.
There was a similar dull, hollow fate for the other players who were indefinitely banned, as they effectively became zombies of the Counter-Strike scene. They were the walking dead, skilled enough to play against anyone in the world but unable to set foot where all their work would matter the most.
"I think it took me a few months to realize the magnitude of it all," AZK, one of Brax's teammates from IBP, said. "The first few months I remember getting up every day to play and stream as if nothing had happened. I don't think I was really there mentally or emotionally, I was just on autopilot running around the map. There was a long period of depression after that, one where I didn't even want to get on the computer anymore, which was a first for me.
"That was a very hard time for me and I remember having a bunch of crazy thoughts popping up in my head. I'm lucky to have been surrounded by a bunch of great people in my personal life that has always kept me looking ahead of myself instead of looking into the past."
Day after day, Pierce and the other exiled members from the scandal would wake up, go through their unfocused routine and hope it would be the day Valve changed their mind. And while other organizations over the years began loosening their limitations, allowing Pierce and his peers a chance to play on competitive teams in sizeable events, Valve kept steadfast in their overall decision.
Then, on Jan. 30, 2018, almost three years to the day of the banning, Pierce watched from afar as history occurred. Skadoodle, his former teammate, now playing for Cloud9, pulled off the miracle run Pierce had always dreamed of completing while as part of iBUYPOWER. C9 ran the gauntlet and made it all the way to the grand finals, upsetting European powerhouse FaZe in a match watched by more than 1 million concurrents on Twitch to become the first-ever North American Counter-Strike: Global Offensive world champions.
Even now, in the back of his head, it gnaws at Pierce. If only he hadn't made the worst decision of his life, it could have been him up there next to Skadoodle, with AZK behind them, raising the world title in the air as the hometown American crowd coronated them. They could have been heroes rather than an endless what-if story.
"On stream, I'd play against the pros people considered the best and I'd destroy them," Pierce said. "Even watching professional matches and stuff, I'd be watching these guys and I'd be like, 'Oh my god, why is he doing that?' I'd just know in my head I wouldn't make that mistake they did, this professional player that was getting paid way more than I was making. It was definitely depressing. I just feel like I wasted my whole life playing this game."
At 23, Pierce was plugging away, doing the best he could with the limitations around him. Though Valve still hadn't reversed their decision, he hadn't quit on the game, still playing on amateur teams and streaming to a loyal audience that hadn't wavered in their support. While other players from the scandal had ultimately given up, fading away from the scene, Pierce continued the grind, playing in online qualifiers, picking up a few thousand-dollar placements here and there as he bounced around different lineups.
Unbeknownst to him, however, a professional esports team was watching Brax with an intent eye. T1, an organization built in a joint partnership between America's Comcast Communication and South Korea's SK Telecom, has an illustrious record in esports, having won three world champions in the world's most-watched esport, League of Legends. In Counter-Strike, though, they were non-existent.
T1 weren't looking at Pierce as a Counter-Strike player, though. CEO Joe Marsh and the rest of the organization had a different plan for the former Counter-Strike prodigy. Riot Games, the creators of League of Legends, had announced during their 10th-anniversary celebration the forthcoming release of their first-person shooting game that would eventually be titled VALORANT. As the game's alpha period progressed and its similarities to Counter-Strike became apparent, the wheels began turning for T1 on what maneuver they could make to position themselves at the center of Riot's newest esport.
In a strange, serendipitous twist of fate, Pierce's decision to continue to play Counter-Strike even in the face of a ban that seemed more definite than indefinite worked out in a way that he could never see coming. Before he even downloaded VALORANT and had a chance to play the game, T1 offered him a starting job on the organization's future roster. They wanted to make him the first pro in VALORANT history.
"I was thinking positive for the most part, but there is always that thought in the back of your head on if I'm [even] going to be good at this game," Pierce said. "There were comments online about why they would sign this pro that didn't even play the game, can't wait for him to flop, and in the back of my mind I'm thinking about how I can't wait to prove you all wrong."
The gambit from T1 paid off and Pierce, now going by the simplified gamertag "Brax," took to the game like a fish to water, with the similar gunplay to Counter-Strike helping him get a foothold in the game. From his inaugural streams and beta tournaments playing VALORANT, it wasn't only T1 that began believing in Pierce, it was the audience at large. He was long-removed from his competitive days, but it became clear he still had the skills of a champion.
"Brax is going to pick up right where he left off in CS:GO," esports commentator Jason "Moses" O'Toole said. "He's going to be the front-runner and anchor of the [North American] scene. He's got two big factors going for him that will power success in Valorant: he's got some of the best raw aim I've ever seen, and his ability to improvise on the fly."
Once he realized he could actually excel in VALORANT, there was only one additional thing on his list he needed before committing himself fully to his next adventure -- a piece of his past. Pierce knew that the No. 2 member of the T1 roster needed to be someone he could trust and have chemistry with in-game, and there was no one else he wanted than the French-Canadian that starred with him as part of the former iBUYPOWER squad, AZK.
On the day of the game's entrance into the closed beta phase, AZK was formally announced as T1's second player. From there, the dominoes continued to fall. The team acquired Counter-Strike prospects Austin "crashies" Roberts and Victor "food" Wong along with head coach Daniel "fRoD" Montaner, someone who's known Pierce since his early days in the esports world.
"He became a pro-Counter-Strike player at a very young age, so to see where he's at now it's simply amazing," fRod said. "As a famous philosopher once said, he's at the top of the mountain but only halfway up."
The final piece to the puzzle, the fifth starter, felt almost destined to fall into place. After winning a world championship with C9, Skadoodle went inactive from the team and the pro Counter-Strike scene in late 2018, turning to streaming daily on Twitch. When VALORANT's closed beta opened, he decided to start playing the game, even joining up with Pierce and AZK in online tournaments, winning various competitions.
The one player from the team not banned in the match-fix scandal, the one that went on to fulfill his potential by becoming a world champion, wanted to try his hand at a new game. Other high-placed organizations showed interest, but in the end, it couldn't be anyone else. T1 signed Skadoodle to reunite three-fifths of the team that was once prophesied to be North America's best chance at becoming the best in the world.
"It's a blessing to play with Brax and AZK once again, longtime friends and former teammates who have helped me get to where I am today," Skadoodle said. "I am grateful that we get to compete side by side and I'm confident we will find great success if we work hard every day."
The fog of the last five years is finally dissipating for Pierce as a sense of motivation fuels him.
Not many people in life get a second chance, but Pierce, alongside two friends who witnessed the darkest part of his life, is ready to embrace his. It's another opportunity to climb the ladder, to push himself every day to get one step farther than the day before.
Pierce was able to say a bittersweet goodbye to Counter-Strike, the game that made an introverted boy find a voice even during the most turbulent of times. When asked if there's anyone he wanted to thank for helping him get to this point, his answer was simple and straightforward -- his family: the older brother who was with him when they first saw a copy of Counter-Strike at a gaming store; the mom who took him to video game tournaments when he was a teenager to play against people twice his age.
"To see him get through all the adversity, and never give up on his dream has finally paid off," Pierce's mom said. "He absolutely loves the game and I know he will excel and never stop working to be the best! I'm looking forward to the matches and tournaments and I believe there are great things ahead for both him and the game. Go Brax!"
As VALORANT continues to evolve, so will T1 and Pierce if they want to compete. The skills honed in Counter-Strike will help in the early months, yet as more new players enter the scene, the challenges will only get steeper, a new generation of gamers wanting to knock Pierce off his perch the way he did when he was a teenager.
There will be jeers from critics who believe he doesn't deserve a second chance.
Some days T1 will win and they'll be on the top of the world, and others they will be upset in the first round and that world will come crashing down.
Hundreds of thousands will watch every mistake and triumph Pierce achieves on the pro stage, with sweat shed, blood lost and tears of victory (or defeat) on display for all to see.
And Pierce, after so long, wouldn't want it any other way.