Singularity part ways with American squad following ESL Pro League changes

29/1/2020 - 16:03

Singularity have parted ways with their North American roster in the aftermath of ESL's restructuring of their flagship league, ESL Pro League, which left the organization without a spot in the upcoming season.

Singularity's North American venture concludes after 15 months. The Danish organization picked up Gorilla Gang in late 2018, a team which included Cloud9's Josh "⁠oSee⁠" Ohm and Envy's Ryan "⁠ryann⁠" Welsh. After several changes to their lineup along the way they found themselves signing the New Identity core consisting of Will "⁠dazzLe⁠" Loafman, Michael "⁠dapr⁠" Gulino and Skyler "⁠Relyks⁠" Weaver, and rounded out the ESL Pro League Season 10 Americas team list.

After going out last in the first group stage of the tournament, they were invited to take over Complexity's spot in the second group stage as the Dallas-based organization had signed two inelligible players. Singularity ended up in 7-8th place after finishing second in their group behind ATK.

dapr and company will no longer play for Singularity

Singularity parted ways with dazzLe and Jordan "⁠Zellsis⁠" Montemurro earlier this season and were seen using Hunter "⁠SicK⁠" Mims, Shahzeb "⁠ShahZaM⁠" Khan and Kaleb "⁠moose⁠" Jayne—who was playing in Sebastian "⁠seb⁠" Bucki's stead—, but will now cease operations in North America after losing their ESL Pro League spot after the German tournament organizer restructured their flagship league, cutting the amount of teams playing it to 24.

In a conversation with Singularity CEO Atle S. Stehouwer, HLTV.org learned that the organization was in talks with the aforementioned former Complexity players, as well as Rory "⁠dephh⁠" Jackson, to have a team ready for the upcoming ESL Pro League season, but that the rescission of their spot in the league put a damper on the negotiations. It also put a halt to the plans the Danish organization had to build a gaming house and an office in North America to accommodate their team and business venture.

On such a short notice and without information flowing from ESL, Singularity were unable to renegotiate contracts for the team's new situation or look for a lesser team to play MDL, mentioning the instability and lack of information surrounding the qualifying process for ESL Pro League in the future.

Coming from a commercial background, Mr. Stehouwer says ESL's decision is understandable from a business perspective, but warns that if tournament organizers create chaos and hurt the competitive integrity of the circuit in their bid to control the market it could prompt Valve to take action were things to get out of hand.

The Danish organization will now continue to focus on their European operation as they recently announced the signing of a Danish roster built around former North and Heroic player Daniel "⁠mertz⁠" Mertz.

"I’m sad that we have to part ways due to this unfortunate situation, but just as we were about to make some bigger changes in the roster, and build what we believed would have been a stable roster that we could have achieved a top 30 ranking etc., ESL decided to make their move and give us a three-day window transitioning from EPL to MDL and without disclosing more information about their path to pro circuit outside of MDL. It sucks hard to leave the NA CS:GO scene like this, but life isn’t always fair, and I hope we will be able to return when the CS:GO landscape is more transparent again.

"I love my team, and I don’t want to limit their development or chances, so this is a mutual decision in the team. Team Singularity’s journey in the NA scene has been a rollercoaster ride that started almost 1,5 years ago and I’ve enjoyed every moment of it.

"I hope our players, coach and team manager will find solid homes, and I wish them all the best in their future journey and I’m sad that Singularity will not be a part of it. I cherished the time we have had together for the past 4 months, and playing the first to stages of EPL last season was a dream come true. Take care mates I’ll miss you a lot"

- Atle S. Stehouwer, Singularity CEO & Founder

The Singularity lineup was:

Skyler "⁠Relyks⁠" Weaver
Michael "⁠dapr⁠" Gulino
Sebastian "⁠seb⁠" Bucki

Hunter "⁠SicK⁠" Mims (stand-in)
Shahzeb "⁠ShahZaM⁠" Khan (stand-in)
Kaleb "⁠moose⁠" Jayne (stand-in)

Ian "⁠Immi⁠" Harding (coach)

unlucky

2020-01-29 16:03

Fuck ESL

2020-01-29 16:04

:( sadfddddddddsadsdas

:o) ya yeet

2020-01-29 16:05

lmao

2020-01-29 16:10

Save Dapr!

2020-01-29 17:20

very unluko

Very unexpected

2020-01-29 16:15

ESL fucking all

2020-01-29 16:23

unluko

ez for motm

gj esl

2020-01-29 17:03

team with 3 stand-ins

2020-01-29 16:07

ESL destroying smaller orgs....

2020-01-29 16:08

Fuck esl

Stehouwer is right about ESL's decision

2020-01-29 16:09

fuck esl, they're putting people out of jobs because they created a horrible structure for their league. Valve needs to step in and tell them to fuck off with this shit.

2020-01-29 16:26

Or is it that thy bought a danish roaster and throws all the blame on ESL

2020-01-29 16:29

or, valve now should just embrace Bsite and Blast instead of esl let esl died its way

2020-01-29 16:31

What are you talking about? Blast and B site models are even more predatory. Basically C9 and MIBR want league where they don't need to be good to make money and deny access to that money for teams without spot in th league. If Valve ever emabrces such a model it would be death of csgo. Because skills wouldn't matter, only whether org has spot in league or not. I hope that Valve just organise just more majors and maybe even its own open circuit to kill these closed leagues.

2020-01-29 16:49

you do realise that any team that falls bellow top 20 must pay a 100k fine in B site, as to keep the league competitive

2020-01-30 10:58

Well then good luck with the league lol. I still hope Valve will make csgo format closer to how it works in Dota 2.

2020-01-30 17:18

> created a horrible structure for their league The horrible structure was creating a league with 48 teams and not being able to monetize it. Them cutting the number of teams in half is a market correction. ... The issue lies in the three day notice for these teams to react. Honestly think this is a necessary correction for NACS. Scene has been over-inflated far too long.

2020-01-29 16:55

Relyks onliner finally disbanded!

Time to sue

2020-01-29 16:11

ESL...

2020-01-29 16:16

1. Give up on murican team 2. Buy danish team 3. Dont add missing 4th and 5th for murican team 4. kick murican team 5. say its all ESLs fault, even tho you always planned it 6. ??? 7. Profit

2020-01-29 16:24

That is what thy did

2020-01-29 16:28

#FUCKESL

This team had 3 players when thy disbanded

They just listen to Thoorin and blame ESL for everything. They however forget that B Site is not going save any teams beyond few big and rich orgs that currently suck (read MIBR and Cloud9) that use money to kill competitiom ($2m entry fee). If B site is successful, these 2 teams and others can rest on laurels.

2020-01-29 17:07

How is it's ESL fault that thy only had 3 players?

Na shit teams no point to pay these guys ..... ESL Scapegoat :) Shit Org only 3 players were left.

2020-01-29 16:40

Weak org, bound to not win a single title disbands with 3 players on roster and blames ESL for not wanting to have them in their premier league

2020-01-29 16:54

Expected

2020-01-29 17:01

I thought they had already signed the euro squad and were going to leave NA anyways

2020-01-29 17:13

what kind of contracts did these guys even have if this is possible lol

2020-01-29 17:40

Valve should kill esl. ESL is monopolizing cs competitions. This is not good

2020-01-29 17:44

ESL should have been much more transparent and given these teams more time. Its a shitty situation right now and is probably close to Valve intervention but to be honest they havent broken any of the rules Valve set out yet. Hopefully the backlash will make them realize they need to change some things like they have previously cause otherwise they will just leave a bad taste in everyones mouth.

2020-01-29 17:51