A little more than six months after the Vancouver Titans came within striking distance of winning the Overwatch League championship, the team announced that it has fired all of its players. According to an open letter to fans, the reason for the drastic cuts is not performance, but the impact the COVID-19 epidemic has had on players far from home.

"At the start of the season, the enthusiasm of the team and the organization was at an all-time high. The team was ready to avenge their Grand Final loss and contend for the Overwatch League championship again. We were excited for our players to experience Vancouver as their new home and were ready to showcase them to you through content and events throughout the season as they settled into their new home at Adamas Esports Training + Performance."

the team wrote.

However, after starting the season with a 2-2 record, a coronavirus outbreak forced the team to cancel a weekend of live competition home stand events, a major problem for the Vancouver-based team, whose entire roster is from Korea.

"The original plan was for the team to join the Asian division and continue playing the new schedule from the players' homes, but it soon became clear that this would create a whole new set of challenges. The time difference made it difficult for management and the home fan base to connect with the team, and for the players playing at home, the technical challenges made the situation even worse."

"The team's schedule was not as flexible as it had been in the past." After much deliberation and discussion with the players about the organization's inability to meet their expectations in Korea, the difficult decision was made to return the team to the North American division, and both the players and management agreed that it was in everyone's best interest to find a new home for the players"

.

As a result of this release, the following players and staff will lose their teams:

It is unclear what will happen next. The Titans are not leaving the Overwatch League - "We look forward to announcing the Titans' new roster in the near future," the letter says - but they will be playing Washington Justice this weekend, May 9, and Florida Mayhem on May 10, which is not at all There is not much time to put together a new team.

According to ESPN, the Titans will sign most of the Contender's League second winds as substitutes, but only five of them are old enough to play in the league, and the other three are minors and cannot sign. The Overwatch League requires each team to register a minimum of eight players.

We have contacted the Titans for more information and will update if we hear back.