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"