Fans of the Overwatch League team won't have missed seeing a drastic change on the players' social networks lately. They have, one by one, removed all mentions of the team in their Twitter bio. No official explanation has yet been provided regarding the team's internal situation, but rumors and hypotheses are flying around to explain the situation.
May 6 Update
The team has just announced the departure of all its players.
After many rumors and the departure of most of the coaching staff, it's now official: Vancouver Titans have parted ways with their players by mutual agreement.
May 5 Update
This is a new development in the rumors around Vancouver Titans. Arran "Halo" Brown — known on Twitter for leaking a lot of information about Overwatch — announced that the team had signed Third Impact Contenders roster. He later backed out before adding that the team was evaluating several options in the Tier 2 scene.
Nothing is certain, except that a new departure has occurred. Andante — who was one of the last team coaches — has left the team (or been fired). There's only one coach remaining at the moment: Yangwon "Yang1" Kwon, who was previously Assistant Coach.
May 1 Update
The OW Beacon Twitter account relayed information that was allegedly issued by Roy, one of the OWL's Chinese caster. According to him, all the players have already left the team.
April 30 Update
Today we learned the departures of two significant members of the Vancouver Titans: Head coach Hwang "PaJion" Jisub and Flex Tank HyunWoo "JJANU" Choi. At the moment, the team have fallen below the minimum of eight players to make up the team. They'll have to recruit at least one new member, to replace Jjanu who was the only one in that role. Next week's games will be very difficult to play for Vancouver which will have to quickly integrate a new player into their roster.
April 28 Update
On April 26, Vancouver Titans have tweeted to announce that the team would be back in the Pacific Division. They will play against Washington Justice on May 9 and Florida Mayhem on May 11. Given the impossibility of making matches between the Asian and American regions — mainly due to latency problems — the team must return to the US.
This situation may very well explain the issue explained below with players being against the decision to return to American soil with the current situation.
It all begins on April 16, 2020 with the announcement of the departure of general manager Anthony Muraco from Canucks Sports & Entertainment — the company that owns Vancouver Titans and the Rogers Arena.
Two and three days later respectively, Haskal and Slime removed all mention of Vancouver Titans from their own Twitter biographies. In this process, they will be joined shortly after by Twilight, SeoMinSoo, but also by Head Coach PaJion and Assistant Coach Andant.
The issue of settling the players' salaries was immediately brushed aside by Ryan Nicholas — Senior Director, Content and Design at Canucks Sports & Entertainment — who has ensured that wages have been paid in accordance with the players' contracts.
Other rumours seem to point to an internal conflict between the players and their coaches against the management team.
Other rumours say that the players are frustrated with the team's overall management and communication.
It will be reminiscent of the implosion of the London Spitfire roster implosion at the end of the 2019 Overwatch League Season — leading to the almost complete departure of the reigning champions.
2020 Season won't have been that bright for Vancouvers Titans with the beginning of the online format and two defeats in Week 10 against Guangzhou Charge and Chengdu Hunters.
Poor team performance can be related to these internal problems, but it will still be necessary to wait for an official statement to validate or not these assumptions.
Updates to the Communication Wheel, Match Queue, and the Workshop are the topics addressed by Jeff Kaplan in the last Overwatch Developer Update.
