Over the state of the game and every one leaving the league for other games.
Feels bad man. 
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Iâm not sure what this means,
Did he quit Overwatch?
I donât know why he said âdown and outâ â I watched for a little bit tonight and heâs basically feeling depressed about playing the game and that everyone is jumping ship. He sounded pretty down. If heâs actually âoutâ I didnât see that part.
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Are they not allowed to play any other game besides Overwatch?..
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When youre a pro player, its more than just a game, its his job. No one wants their job to go down the hill.
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I feel bad for players like surefour who definitely love the game. Blizz does not deserve players like him.
But honestly blizz deserves all the problems they are having right now. Everyone has been telling them the changes they are making are poor and are driving the community away. Now their pro community is starting to abandon it and that is going to hit them in the wallet. They are gonna have a rough time recovering from this if they ever do. Lol
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Well as a pro gamer, they are entitled to play whatever game they want. Want to drop one for another? Go ahead.
âDown and outâ can mean two things. Either the person is without a job and broke. Or they could simply be extremely bummed out and hopeless, unable to fight on. I am assuming he means the latter, in this case. As Surefour is obviously not literally âdown and out.â
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If he wanted to change games he would already jump ship but is still here because he actually cares about the game. Youre just talking for the average casual gamer.
You do realize people can complain about things they care about right?
Actually, he wouldnât be able to play anything.
Contractual obligations would prevent him from playing another game while heâs continuing his current position.
Different story if it were the original org and not the OWL version of the org⌠or if he were a benchwarmer/stream team player and not the actual OWL roster.
Actually (and Iâm speaking for myself here but I am sure there are others that are the same) some of us really only take the time to be so vocally critical of things we really love.
If I donât like something and never liked it, I mostly just be quiet and leave it alone. You wonât find me on Call of Dutyâs forum. I never cared much about it.
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It seems like itâs really not hard for league players to end contract with league and go play something else, given that multiple pros have done just that. The biggest example being Sinatraa, whoâs still getting his mvp skin while he flounces off to Valorant midseason of League. I suspect that will change in the future when contracts are up for renegotiation.
It is their 9-5, so time is a factor.
Neptuno recently said his team had practice 4-6 hours every day and thatâs before vods and coaching sessions.
Itâs a job like any other, youâre allowed to quitâŚ
That said, it really depends on the terms of the contract. If they fulfilled obligations in the older contract, they might have just been able to extend the term of that old contract instead of accepting a brand new contract with new obligations.
Leaving mid-season is very damning and prohibits re-entry. It likely comes with a hefty fine, a non-compete for other teams in the League (so you canât re-enter the league on another team to shop around if it pays better) for an undisclosed amount of time, complete loss of benefits (kicked out of a team house, loss of health/vision/dental insurance and retirement plans), or all of the above.
That said, they probably have more money waiting for them in other games, so they weighed their options and decided to quit, knowing they could blow up on a streaming platform for a few months so they can pay off the fine, and then try to enter the other scenes⌠and if not, they still have a living from being a streamer.
LoLâs LCS salaries are over 300k depending on the org, that it makes OWL 50k salaries look like chump change.
With a lot of contact employees quitting early doesnât happen without penalties that make this difficult. They also donât seem to have non-compete clauses as they keep immediately announcing they are leaving for a competiting organization.
Edits:
The titans are all free agents some of whom are looking for new league teams, Sinatraa is being able to live in some league housing for a bit, etc.
Players who get traded/shop around mid-season are different. In those situations the org pays for the playerâs exit so they can take them on.
Non-competes would probably be Overwatch-specific⌠not necessarily non-competes with other orgs. OWL teams are distant from the actual parent orgs that own the teams.
For example, Cloud9 owns the London Spitfire, and they wouldnât shoot themselves in the foot/prevent themselves from rehiring a Spitfire player who wanted to quit OWL. Theyâd allow the contract to get terminated so they could absorb the player back as C9 proper.
Considering in this kind of situation the non-compete would probably just be for the term of the contract, which appears seasonal, they probably would. When they sign them for a season of league, they probably want to ensure that the player will be there that whole season.
I imagine that part of it is that Valorant doesnât actually have a league yet. So although Valorant is a competiting product, by the time all is said and done, they wouldnât be under that anyway. Making attempts at enforcement of any terms pointless and accomplish nothing but sour their relation with the player.
And part of it is probably the penalties arenât severe enough to be a significant deterrent. I would suspect both would change in the future so that most players will end up leaving at the end of a season rather than the middle barring more significant circumstances than wanting to play a different game.
Valorant doesnât have a scene yet, but the orgs are definitely starting to scout talent.
Itâs totally possible that thereâs some insider stuff going on and the parent orgs are actually secretly encouraging some of the players to self-terminate in OWL so that theyâd be a free agent thatâs eligible for tryouts to bring them onboard to Valorant.
Itâs also entirely possible that the orgs themselves want to get out. That million dollar slot buy-in might not look so great anymore, and they might appreciate terminating players if it means they no longer have to pay out the salary.
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I suspect itâs probably some of those things too. Especially since Homestands didnât happen cause of Covid. I donât think the situation going on now will be going on for years though. I see Valorant rising pretty high for the next couple of years, but not this situation of players on teams annoucing in the middle of a season that they are leaving to go play Valorant.
Yeah it sucks to be in that situation.
I recall Emongg spoke about how it feels to log in and see everyone playing different games. The clipâs too old so itâs gone, but I did type it before so the text isnât hard to find again
Imagine this. This is what overwatch is like to me right now. Coming from somebody who no friends in highschool like 3 maybe. You finally have a lunch table with friends and youâre like wow I can actually eat with somebody, this is exciting. Then all of your friends are either put into other lunch periods or they just donât come to lunch anymore and youâre just by yourself back at the lunch table. That is what overwatch is like to me now when it comes to streaming because everybody I have been playing with over the past 3 years has quit to do other stuff. . .I still enjoy the game, but what I really miss is the people that were around me and the personalities.
Iâd imagine what many people saying âjust switch games 4headâ miss is that people (including streamers and professionals) donât only chase the money or the next trend - many of them love competing in overwatch and many of them love the interaction with all of their friends here. Itâs easy to cynically look at players from the forums and dumb them down to money-chasing robots but it isnât that simple.
There are going to be a lot of old and familiar names leaving the league and a lot of new names coming in, both in league and on ladder. The âexodusâ to valorant in particular is going to be a rough transition period for people who actually play for more than just money. Not just players too, probably coaches and managers and all sorts of staff.
Donât get me wrong Iâm not saying Blizzard should completely change the game to keep people from jumping ship; however, there is an argument worth making that Blizzard did a poor job at fostering a healthy competitive community, instead opting to force a very fragile and inorganic one.
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