Valorant isn’t fully released, and the closed beta isn’t even fully available worldwide. But less than a month after the closed beta was released, professional players have already begun switching allegiances, with one Overwatch pro announcing his retirement for Valorant.
The professional player wasn’t on the fringes, either. Overwatch League champions San Francisco Shock, who dominated last year so strongly that they won 28 straight wins with a clean sweep of the grand finals, announced that Jay “Sinatraa” Won, would be retiring from Overwatch and leaving the team.
He came, he saw and he conquered.
Thank you and best of luck in your future endeavors @Sinatraa???? pic.twitter.com/XCyWSzN4UV
— San Francisco Shock (@SFShock) April 28, 2020
In a Twitlonger post, Won explained that he “straight up just lost passion for the game”. “I just know it was hard for me to log on to play and I didn’t have fun in scrims/ranked at all anymore,” Won wrote. “I did not make this decision in 1 day it took a full month of non stop thinking every day and sleepless nights from being so stressed. It fucking sucked but ultimately I wanted to do whats right for me.”
Won’s departure is no small matter, given he was the Overwatch League MVP and MVP at the Overwatch World Cup finals at Blizzcon in 2019. His natural good looks also made him a useful marketing tool for the Blizzard league, following an ESPN report, that asset is jumping ship to Riot. The Los Angeles-based esports team Sentinels announced that Won would play alongside Jared “Zombs” Gitlin, Shahzeb “ShahZaM” Khan and Hunter “SicK” Mims. The four players will be looking to recruit a fifth in the coming weeks.
“The move to Valorant is no doubt a huge step in my career, and I couldn’t be more excited about the opportunity,” Won said on the Sentinels website.
It’s an interesting move for a few reasons. Not only has one of Blizzard’s biggest Overwatch abandoned the company’s competitive circuit, Won chose to do so despite the restrictions placed upon him. According to the Overwatch League rules, retiring players are barred from signing with any rival Overwatch League or any of their affiliate teams. NRG Esports are one team that Won could have played for – since NRG is the parent company of the San Francisco Shock, and they’re making a high-profile Valorant team of their own with Brandon “Ace” Winn and Colby “dizzy” Meadows – but the OWL MVP clearly chose to go in a different direction.
The interesting element here is how quickly organisations are already pivoting towards Valorant, despite the game’s lack of competitive structure, no ranked mode and no tournament scene to date. Those things will undoubtedly emerge – ESPN already has already held an invitational tournament and there have been a string of community tournaments over the last few weeks, including one in Australia.
But betting on a game going big is different to actually putting your money behind it. And it’s a whole other thing to bet your career on a game that’s not even released. But for Won, and other players, that may not matter – it might just be time for something new.
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