Azure Ray’s Faith_bian Changes In-Game Name to Bach

Zhang “Faith_bian” Ruida, who recently came out of retirement to play professionally once again with ESL One Kuala Lumpur 2023 champion Azure Ray, has decided to change his in-game ID to Bach. The player has been known as Faith_bian throughout his long career, which began with Speed Gaming.cn in 2014. Although no official reason was given for the name change, the community speculated that it might have to do with the respect and admiration he has for the great pianist Johann Sebastian Bach.

AR.Bach Ready For the 2024 Season

On 2nd January, Azure Ray announced its complete roster for the upcoming season and fans were quick to notice that the announcement didn’t include Faith_bian’s name. Instead featured the name “Bach.” 

To clear any confusion, Azure Ray tweeted, “To clarify: Ti6 champion Faith_bian has decided to make a return to the pro scene with us and will change his In-game ID to Bach. Excited to see you come back boss @Faith_bian,” making it clear that “Bach” was none other than Faith_bian himself.

However, it should be noted that there has been no official statement behind the motivation for this name change after almost a decade of donning his original ID. Fans speculate that Faith_bian (Bach) may have changed his name to pay his tribute to German composer and musician Johann Sebastian Bach.

AR.Bach made his admiration for the composer known via OG’s Monkey Business podcast last year. He revealed that his lifelong dream was to perform this masterpiece called the Goldberg Variation which is a Bach composition. He expressed his desire to play the piece saying, “I wish I could play it after maybe after 20 years or 30 years. I can’t play it. It’s a very hard piece. Every best pianist respects it and wants to play it.“

Faith_bian also talked about how he started learning the piano all by himself in recent years and did not learn the instrument growing up. For now, he is back to playing Dota 2 and has seemingly halted his piano lessons for the time being in hopes of taking Azure Ray to newer heights.

Faith_bian aka Bach’s return to the professional scene was a much-welcomed change. He is one of the loved players from the Chinese region and has close ties with Johan “N0tail” Sundstein, Sébastien “Ceb” Debs and was even spotted at the wedding of Tal “Fly” Aizik.