The OMM roster swap

There has been a lot of backlash with the decision I made and understandably, a lot of frustration. Before going on any further with peoples framing of the situation which is currently one-sided, it is important that they have the whole picture. So here it is:



To give some context, the team just underwent negotiations with the organisation and part of the arrangement was that we needed to do well in the OMM and the Rivalcade rumble. Our staff started working around the clock to get us ready. Like me, squid is a person with a lot of pride, so getting a point across is very difficult. Regardless, in the past month, the team has tried to do so in various capacities. Any criticism from me on his play, would be totally disregarded and would end up in a fight. Dahun spent some time saving some bookmarks on a VOD and when he approached squid, nothing good came of it either. He KNEW that we needed him to become a better tracer, or just player in general and work on his game sense (https://gyazo.com/4f3474e769afe9a3a3ea28213d0c6f09). Squid has always been hard to get a hold of, call him to WAKE UP before scrims, call him when unpausing the game, taking scrims lightly, not showing up to VOD reviews whatsoever or watch pro games with us in TS, he made us feel like he wasn't invested at all.



With that in mind, here's the timeline of the events: On the 13th 7PM EST, I am requested to end my stream because we have scrims at 8. I am announced that once again squid did not show up to scrims and we have to cancel. We have a tournament the next day, and we had stuff to do with squid. With the challenging bracket we had the next day, I thought we could use an emergency ringer like silk to help us. silkthread is talented, vocal, energetic, up to par mechanically and in the composition we run he would be a great fit for the event. I held a team meeting, and told everyone about my idea. After a bit of talking every member, every staff member agrees that it's an odd gamble, but a necessary risk, we couldn't afford another bad showing. I know some of you guys have the idea that ''pro teams'' have very professional ways to saying things in well written emails like in the movies, but with denial we're not quite there. So I was chosen to announce it to him. We had the intentions of helping squid work on his game sense severely after the tournament, but no intentions of cutting him. After I announced that we we're going to play with a ringer at 12:18, he left our twitter group (https://gyazo.com/9681de4941fddc3de18a17bac30f95ab) and then left our personal TEAM DISCORD by himself. He left me a hostile message on discord (https://gyazo.com/d2cd9434a03a910660223dd46db4b06f) which made me realize that there might be some retaliation ahead. I own a discord with 1600 members in it, which is very important to me and my stream and decided that it was the right call, to take away his rights to kick/ban people from the discord and downgrade him from his team tag which allows a lot of power in it. Please consider that this is after he left our discord, which made it very clear he had no intentions of staying on the team.



Even with the respect I have for squid after having worked with him for so long, I made the decision that silkthread's gap in mechanics relative to the professional scene did not outweigh the gaps in team chemistry we had at that point. I didn't announce it well or do it professionally and again, I take full responsibility for that. But that night, I made a decision based on winning, and we won. I had this feeling that the hitscan part of our team could use our work, and I wanted to have a taste of what it was to play with an insane tracer I can rely on. silkthread will probably not stay on the team because of school but our quest to find a player that is nearly equally skilled will continue after the event. I am truly sorry for the people hurt in the crossfire, the fans that I will lose because of it and the Jolson fans I made upset. I understand I approached the situation poorly and this will be a learning experience. I had no malicious intent with squid, and wish him nothing but the best in the future. I know how he operates and I'm sure he has plans on being one of the best tracers OW will see.



-Félix 'xQc' Lengyel

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