Photo: Gfinity
The news comes from the stream of Gfinity semi-finalist Simon "Sottle" Welch, who said that he and all his team-mates are no longer with the British organization.
"You will hear both sides of the story - that we left and that we've been released - which probably ends somewhere as a mutual agreement," states Sottle in his narrative. The Brit recently made the headlines, finishing top four in Gfinity Spring Masters I, eliminating decorated players like Harald "Powder" Gimre and Jan "Faramir" Engelmann. He was also a part of the first wave of signees into Infused's Hearthstone roster, being acquired on October 17th, a week after the division was created.
"From our perspective, we certainly felt we were undervalued as a team," Sottle continues, saying Infused had significantly higher priorities in other games than in Hearthstone. Infused are currently hosting rosters in Battlefield Hardline, Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare, CS:GO (#97 in the EU West rankings) and League of Legends.
Despite still being considered up-and-comers, Infused's Hearthstone roster has had its share of successes on domestic soil. Apart from Sottle's top four finish at Gfinity, team-mate Michael "ExplodingCow" Evans took the silver at this weekend's Insomnia54 festival after losing a narrow 3-4 to Trig's Powder.
On twitter, the organization further confirmed they have no plans to re-open the Hearthstone division, as they believe the game is "about luck of the draw".
@GosuGamersHS We have no current plans to return to HS as feel the game is about luck of the draw. We will look at other game options
— Team Infused (@team_infused) April 7, 2015
Update 20:30 CET
In its bizzarity, the aforementioned tweet sparked a whole other conversation and twitter disputes, all on its own. Different players shared their own stories on why they parted ways with Infused, the first one after Sottle being Nick “Aquablad” Secker, who wrote on HearthstoneUK that he “felt [his] ambitions within Hearthstone had out-grown the organization,” words which are very much in line with Sottle’s statement on what Infused’s vision of their Hearthstone division was.
Shortly after, Infused issued another tweet, essentially saying their Hearthstone players wouldn’t be with them in three months’ time so the organization decided to not prolong their collaboraton any further. With neither the players nor Infused issueing clear statements on what exactly happened, those who followed the story felt quite confused at the time: why was an inevitable parting of ways looming?
Several sources close to the team said the Hearthstone players approached Infused’s management, which had promised them to negotiate giving back and supporting the roster if they showed results that deserve it. Despite putting successes in recent tournaments, however, said negotiations never happened.
Later on, another former Infused member Michael “michr” Rosen published a series of tweets, saying that “in all his 10 years in esports, [he hasn’t been] in a worse run organization over.” When approached for comment, Michr told us his side of the story:
When we first joined, we agreed on not retrieving anything, but instead talk after a few weeks and a few results how the support of the future is going to look like. Personally, I had already voiced my concerns about Infused to my teammates back then, because our manager never talked to any of us, but Raven. And from my understanding, he talked to Raven maybe three times in our entire 6+ month spell in their organisation.
We instead had another person being the waterboy that apparently was in touch with the management and trying to make things happen for us on his own time in the backgrounds. We then had some of our players going to iSeries, which was declared as the most important tournament for Infused, on their own money. Nick (Aquablad) finished 2nd and Mike (Cow) got 5th so we thought that this would open up Infused to the talks we were promised.
Despite trying to talk to them, no one talked to us and we were given the message by another person that the manager wants us to create content. So we also started writing all the news on the Infused website on our spare time. Especially nick did a lot of it, if you check back on the Infused website, most if not all in the past five months is written by Aquablad.
Also, when Aquablad made the final for iseries, we got a headset given to him and a hoodie, but only because the match was played on stage and it would look stupid to not have players in gear there. In the meantime we were doing pretty well, Dire won like 3 ZOTAC US and some ESL tournaments, Sottle qualified for gfinity masters, I qualified for the german Pro Series.
So we were asking for iSeries tickets and a part of travel support, as well as premium costs for Gfinity and ESL. We got no response really. I was given a 2 month voucher for ESL premium, but all of our team still had to play premium costs to participate in gGinity. Shortly before the recent iSeries our players got told that they wouldn’t get any hotel costs, nor travel support, only tickets and only for a select few. Fire got completly shafted and payed for everything out of his pocket. At the venue itself we were told that we would receive headsets from the sponsors. Despite our manager being at the actual venue, he didn’t talk to us, but rather send a person to relay his messages.
After day 3 the headsets hadn't been provided yet however this was due to them not having been collected and bought in side to the venue.
When handed to the players on the last day they said that if the players leave before the next event the headsets would have to be returned to
the organisation which is a fairly standard thing.
When the team left, it was apparently because Infused doesnt want to invest in a game that is decided "by the luck of draws", which triggered my little twitter rant.
While I personally haven’t been the best Hearthstone player to ever touch the game, we have some really hardworking and deserving people in the team. And them getting absolutely fucked in the ass and a team of people that actually enjoy playing with each other and formed a great unit to be ripped apart because of a organisation that didn’t give a shit in the first place just triggered me.
So in summary, we played for Infused, we created content for their website, all while never even given the courtesy of a introduction to the manager, nor a thank you. Hell, we even payed for our own teamspeak.”
Both Michr - who has been inactive in Hearthstone for some time now - and other GosuGamers sources confirm that none of the players in Infused were contracted or salaried and no agreements between the parties were stamped with signatures.
Update 21:40 CET:
When reached out asking for Infused to make a comment, team representatives said:
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