UK eSports organisation Team Dignitas released their Hearthstone and Trackmania players over the weekend.
Dignitas confirmed the news with posts on their website here and here.
This means Hearthstone players Lewis ‘Blackout’ Spencer, James ‘Greensheep’ Luo, Kahjun ‘Kranich’ Baek and Todd ‘Anakins’ Rolls have been let go, while Trackmania players Fredrik “Bergie” Bergmann, Tim “Spam” Lunenburg and Jonathan “JonNno” Holmes have also been released.
“We regret to announce that we have decided to close our Hearthstone squad and release the players from their contracts with immediate effect. We have decided to no longer support Hearthstone moving forward,” Team Dignitas said in a statement.
“We would like to thank the entire lineup for their time in our organisation and we wish them all the very best in their future careers.”
The news comes after Na’Vi dropped their Hearthstone team earlier this month.
Hearthstone competitive play has been criticised recently, with UK Hearthstone player Ness telling eSports News UK that the Yogg card is ‘ridiculous and not competitive at all’.
On Trackmania, Dignitas noted: “Our amazing players won titles in every single major team and solo competition the game and its successors had to offer. Among others, we have been lucky to work with five world champions: XeNoGeaR and Spam from Netherlands, KarjeN from Sweden, our Norwegian team-captain Bergie, as well as one of our youngest players and back-to-back-to-back 3-times world champion CarlJr.
“We regret to announce that we have decided to close our Hearthstone squad and release the players from their contracts with immediate effect. We have decided to no longer support Hearthstone moving forward.”
“Despite our time in Trackmania coming to an end, we will always be proud looking back at our history in the game.”
JonNo added: “We will be finishing STC as a team, and can hopefully bring home the first place, after that who knows, but we can all agree that this has been one enjoyable journey together as a team, and as a group of friends!
“Huge thanks to ODEE for being such a successful eSports manager, and also to Bergie for being the captain of the most successful Trackmania team during the seven years I have been part of it.”
Spam commented: “Team Dignitas was not just a gaming organization, Team Dignitas became my family. I will never forget the great memories that we have created, it will forever stay with me.”
2016 has not been a great year overall for Team Dignitas so far. While the org’s Heroes of the Storm team have enjoyed several successes, earlier this year Dignitas’ League of Legends team were knocked out of the NA LCS.
Org owner Michael “ODEE” O’Dell also commented on the challenge of competing with new eSports orgs backed by vast amounts of venture capital money.
While it’s not unusual to see Dignitas move away from Trackmania due to the competitive scene being quieter nowadays, Blizzard will not be happy that several big-name eSports organisations are leaving Hearthstone behind.
Will we see RNG-heavy cards like Yogg pulled – or changed at least – from competitive Hearthstone in the future?
Dom is an award-winning writer and finalist of the Esports Journalist of the Year 2023 award. He graduated from Bournemouth University with a 2:1 degree in Multi-Media Journalism in 2007.
As a long-time gamer having first picked up the NES controller in the late ’80s, he has written for a range of publications including GamesTM, Nintendo Official Magazine, industry publication MCV and others. He worked as head of content for the British Esports Federation up until February 2021, when he stepped back to work full-time on Esports News UK and offer esports consultancy and freelance services. Note: Dom still produces the British Esports newsletter on a freelance basis, so our coverage of British Esports is always kept simple – usually just covering the occasional press release – because of this conflict of interest.
