“17,400 hours later, childhood dream completed,” Aurimas “Bymas” Pipiras said on X alongside a video of his in-game sticker finally adorning his computer screen.
The Lithuanian rifler achieved his career goal after qualifying for the IEM Cologne Major with Monte, but the German event won’t be Bymas’ first appearance at a Valve-sponsored event.
During his time in MOUZ, he and his team qualified for the PGL Stockholm Major in 2021, but the tournament was the only one to award in-game stickers to only the top-eight teams — a criterion MOUZ didn’t fulfill due to their elimination in the Legends Stage.
“I actually thought that I may never have my sticker in the game, especially after a tough period during Into The Breach,” the Lithuanian tells HLTV ahead of the Cologne Major.
“But even though sometimes I felt that, I never stopped trying my best, and I am very happy that the hard work has finally paid off and I have my name inside the game.”
The five-year period between the two Majors proved to be a turbulent chapter in Bymas’ career, but his start in Counter-Strike is perhaps even more intriguing.
Signing to a star-studded FaZe roster despite only having 26 HLTV-recorded maps in his career threw him into professional Counter-Strike at the deep end, and the 22-year-old admits he wasn’t ready for such a chance to come his way.
“I don’t know how I was in that superstar team back then. I was terrible at communicating, understanding the game, and taking initiative,” Bymas remembers.
“It was not the best to start from the top, because I didn’t show nearly as much as I could have shown after playing team CS for a couple of years, but on the other hand, I feel blessed to have had the chance to play with legends that I looked up to a lot as a kid like NiKo, coldzera, and rain.
“I still remember the day I received a message from NiKo to join a TeamSpeak channel and talk to him. When he told me that they needed a stand-in for FaZe, I couldn’t believe that it was real life.”
Despite this, however, Bymas tells HLTV he wouldn’t change his career path if he had the chance. “I think everything in life happens for a reason, and maybe if I started from a tier-two team, I wouldn’t have ever played in a tier-one organisation and with legends like in FaZe.”
Bymas lasted less than three months on the FaZe roster before being removed in favor of Markus “Kjaerbye” Kjærbye, but MOUZ were quick to see the Lithuanian’s undeniable potential and signed him in the summer of 2020.
It was at that point that Bymas began to find his feet in tier-one CS, and results improved as a more stable environment accelerated his adaptation.
“I definitely felt way better at MOUZ. I felt like the team was like my family there, especially when ropz was still there,” he shares, while adding that the help of the team’s coaches, Allan “Rejin” Petersen and Torbjørn “mithR” Nyborg, proved very useful in terms of understanding the game on a higher level.
MOUZ were a consistent presence at the biggest events and broke into the top 10 of HLTV’s World Ranking several times, peaking at No. 6 after their Flashpoint 3 victory.
The COVID-19 pandemic meant that all competition moved online, though, and Bymas only played at one Major during his two years on the team — the aforementioned Stockholm Major, which didn’t award him an in-game sticker.
Following his MOUZ departure, Bymas joined Into the Breach after a period of inactivity and found himself playing tier-two competitions for the first time in his career, but the 22-year-old’s memories of his time on the team are far from positive.
“Terrible period of my life, the only thing I really loved about it is the friendships I’ve built with some people from ITB,” he laments.
“From the first day, I felt how bad the situation there was. We had very childish problems compared to MOUZ. Some people were immature and didn’t realise how lucky we were to be able to make a living from CS, and therefore they didn’t put in the work they could, which also demotivated other hard-working players in that roster.”
Bymas departed the team after just eight months, and less than a year later, the organization shut down its operations with an unceremonious public announcement.
The 22-year-old then spent a year on the sidelines due to a family tragedy that meant he realigned his priorities and spent more time with his loved ones.
Still, Counter-Strike was always in his heart, and a win at the EEF European Esports Championship 2025 with Lithuania gave him a route back into a professional team.
“After seeing how I played [at the EEF Championship], ryu vouched for me to trial with Monte. Once I heard the news that they are interested, I was really happy to receive the chance. I felt like I finally received an offer from a project that had a lot of potential and hard-working players.”
The start of his tenure in Monte was steady if unspectacular, as the team rose from No. 86 in the VRS to end 2025 at No. 37 after a couple of stand-out results at VRS LANs, such as a second place at Digital Crusade DraculaN Season 1 and a win at DreamHack Knockout Stockholm 2025.
“I like the VRS a lot,” Bymas said about the new system. “I really like that LANs have way more impact than online matches. We all know that the cheating problem happens sometimes. I remember when we still played online matches with the Monte guys, very often we would lose to some terrible teams online, which wouldn’t happen to us on LANs.”
Good results at the end of 2025 netted the squad several tier-one invites, and they made the most out of their chances. A win against Natus Vincere in the online portion of BLAST Bounty began their year before they comfortably progressed through Stage 1 of ESL Pro League S23.
A second-place finish at Digital Crusade DraculaN Season 6 then secured Monte a hard-earned spot at the IEM Cologne Major, where they will start in Stage 2.
“It’s been a quick five years, time flies,” Bymas says about returning to a Major. “I feel very good to finally be able to have a chance to play in the best tournaments vs. the best teams, but I don’t think too much about it.
“In this game you can climb up the rankings very fast, but you can also fall down very fast, so I am always enjoying every tier-one tournament I go to, because you never know when it could be your last one.”
After their dress rehearsal in Astana, where Monte narrowly missed out on the playoffs, Bymas has set his sights on improving on that in Cologne.
“The expectations for me at least is to make the playoffs,” he tells HLTV when quizzed about Monte’s expectations. “I think Stage 3 would be very cool, but for us to feel satisfied, playoffs would be a great achievement.”
Bymas will be one of three Lithuanians at this Major, with the youngest of the trio, Džiugas “dziugss” Steponavičius, recently naming Monte’s rifler as his inspiration for making it as a professional player in a recent Prospects interview.
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HLTV Prospects Season 2: February 2026
“To know that I inspired someone to even grind to become a pro, and that the guy then becomes one of the best prospects in the game, is a very cool feeling,” Bymas said about dziugss’ nod. “I hope one day we will have a Lithuanian team with the best players playing to compete with other tier-one teams, that would be the greatest feeling ever.”
While Bymas’ dream of a full Lithuanian roster making the Major hasn’t come to fruition yet, his unorthodox career paved the way for FACEIT superstars getting a chance on tier-one teams and inspired a generation of national talent to pick up the game. And for that, he deserves his flowers.
