It is with a heavy heart that we are officially announcing that Western Wolves will be closing its doors on December 31st 2013.
Western Wolves emerged as an idea in mid-2011, after about half a year of planning, contacting and pitching later, Western Wolves was officially announced on January 4th 2012. Over the past two years we are extremely proud of what our teams and players have achieved under the wings of Western Wolves. Some have moved on since then and are now playing for the best teams in eSports. We have always tried to create a home for up and coming talent by supporting them in the best possible environment with all means at our disposal.
Thank you to all our current and former staff members: Birger De Geyter, Martijn Bloemheuvel, Sander Van Der Haegen, Michiel De Palmeneire, Reece Fowler, Yuna, Alexander Bratyshkin, John Perd, Connor Magill, David Barker, Kevin Mikkelsen, Mike Howard, Samantha Whale, Sebastian Weishaupt, Thomas Mihailov, Fabien Turgis, Kevin Eun
Last but not least, thank you very much to our faithful sponsors who helped us make Western Wolves possible during these two years: Mad Catz, without them Western Wolves wouldn’t have been, Tritton, Sapphire and AMD for their continuous support.
On December 21 2013 01:23 MasterReY wrote: What about a reason? :/ I dont like news with important information missing.
If there's a lot of questions remaining, I'll fill them in where I can. Of course I won't violate anyone's confidentiality, but I'm confident I can satisfy any questions you lot will have mostly.
@Jayp I don't see where it says specifically why they are closing. I can assume it's because they were just not coming out with enough money to keep it going, though.
I hope Check can find a new team . At first I didn't know what to think of you guys after the Spades incident, but you guys really picked it up later and became a team I was happy to watch. Congratulations on all your achievements and it's sad to hear you're closing your doors.
On December 21 2013 01:23 MasterReY wrote: What about a reason? :/ I dont like news with important information missing.
If there's a lot of questions remaining, I'll fill them in where I can. Of course I won't violate anyone's confidentiality, but I'm confident I can satisfy any questions you lot will have mostly.
I agree, there is nothing about why they are closing. Since they are closing every single one of their esports teams, we can only assume that it is financial issues
On December 21 2013 01:23 MasterReY wrote: What about a reason? :/ I dont like news with important information missing.
If there's a lot of questions remaining, I'll fill them in where I can. Of course I won't violate anyone's confidentiality, but I'm confident I can satisfy any questions you lot will have mostly.
I agree, there is nothing about why they are closing. Since they are closing every single one of their esports teams, we can only assume that it is financial issues
We were actually in a position where we could continue the team without an SC2 squad, or close the team as a whole.
It’s no secret that WW invested a lot in StarCaft 2. We already had world top fighting game players, Fifa players and held a promising CSGO roster among others. But with my background, my personal commitment was always going to be focused on StarCraft 2. I think we can be quite proud of what we've accomplished. We look back at having held an IEM title, and now qualifying for ATC establishing ourselves as a top 4 foreigner team.
Unfortunately our formula is one that simply can’t last in the current scene. We've always focused on finding and training new talent. For example Stings pickup was followed by an IEM win and Check has been tearing up qualifiers very close to a breakthrough moment. That means we deal with a lot of relatively new players. These new talents aren't going to have a stack of WCS points. This was never too big of a problem, WW focused primarily on IEM/DH which we could send players to regardless. We’d like to take a moment to thank these 2 organizations for their role in esports. Without them our journey in esports would not have been possible.
The climate is changing however. You can no longer send players to IEM events if they don’t have sufficient WCS points and DH Winter (arguably the main focus of the team) no longer has an open tournament. This means that we have to count on our players to win qualifiers to attend events. This isn't a bad thing; it’s just how the new system works. Unfortunately qualifiers are often finicky. If you look at the names Check beat in stage 1 of the IEM NY qualifiers, you’d think it’s an amazing showing, only to be confronted with Innovation right off the bat in stage 2. If players do qualify, often the qualifiers are too close to events to be able to budget for them, or the events pay for travel at which point a team contributes very little to begin with.
Traditionally, the most talented players got support from teams, now a team is better off picking up someone that already has WCS points. We got caught in a position where we had talented players that we couldn't send to events. We were paying them but we couldn't show a return to our sponsors. We tried to make up for this by providing a lot more content for sponsors, but that just delayed the inevitable and a team like ours can’t function within the WCS system.
We didn't believe in the WCS system and we can’t sell to our sponsors something we don’t believe in. So the decision was made to either continue on without a StarCraft 2 squad or close up shop. Arguably, we could have taken the money we were offered and survived. To be frank, our remaining players (meaning those in other games) are in such a good position within their respective scenes that they’ll be fine even without us. I spent much more time dealing with SC2 than I did with all other teams combined.
Man that sucks, but many players in various games were given the chance to compete so that's cool. Take care, cool guys of WW, and good luck to the players. Other sc2 teams better Check themselves.
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