Chengdu Hunters Officially Disbanded, Report Reveals
A report from The Esports Advocate's James Fudge has revealed that Chengdu Hunters has disbanded.
Chengdu Hunters joined the Overwatch League in 2019 when the franchise was significantly expanded. Since then, the Chinese team has been very popular and has proven to be pretty successful in its region.
But the team has been rumored to be disbanded since January of 2023. At that time, the team took to Twitter to announce that it was leaving but added “see you again.” This tweet was prompted by Overwatch 2 being shut down in China after a long issue between Blizzard and its distributor in the country. This issue has not been fixed yet.
Since then, Chengdu Hunters has been silent on Twitter and Weibo, where it hasn’t posted anything since December of 2022. But Chengdu Hunters’ Maruko did write on her own personal Weibo in March: “It’s time to say goodbye and I hope everyone from Chengdu Hunters — players and staff — could have a bright future.”
She added that she “knew” Chengdu Hunters wouldn’t post about disbanding on its own Weibo. So far, she’s right.
In April, the Overwatch League brought about another hint that Chengdu Hunters may be disbanded. Fans of the OWL noticed that an announcement didn’t include the team when it issued a statement about the Chinese orgs participating in this year’s season. Then the OWL released another statement on April 18.
“We wanted to share with the community that the Chengdu Hunters are not included in today’s schedule announcement as they continue to contemplate the future direction of their team,” OWL stated.
At this time, fans wondered if the Chinese teams would have to relocate in order to compete. For now, however, the Overwatch League has seemed to find a way to work around the issues in China. And then there were other OWL staff that moved on to VALORANT.
But now, according to Esports Advocate, Chengdu Hunters has officially decided to end its Overwatch League run.
According to the Esports Advocate report, sources close to Chengdu Hunters told reporters that the core players have moved to Hangzhou Spark, another Chinese OWL team. Others will become free agents.
This hasn’t been announced by Chengdu Hunters itself. The last tweet still says: “Goodbye and see you again soon.”
For now, Overwatch League fans will have to wait and see if Blizzard, the Overwatch League, or the team itself finally makes the official announcement. And will another team take its spot going forward? More needs to be revealed. Everything is just speculation for now but fans of the team are not pleased.
We will update this story as more details become available.
