Academic Failure

On May 20th, 2019, Both the Paris Eternal and Florida Mayhem’s Academy teams would be the first of a few to announce that they would not be competing in the upcoming season of Overwatch Contenders. Not only was this a massive blow to the players on those rosters, but to the scene as a whole. Now, Blizzard Co. has a problem, one that needs to be fixed…and fast.

Striving for Academic Excellence.

When Overwatch League teams began announcing that they would be fielding Contenders/ Academy Rosters, I was excited. The concept of Academy teams is one that has been successful in both traditional sports as well as Esports. For example, League of Legends has a solid system of Academy teams for their franchised Organizations. Every single team in the NA LCS fields an Academy roster and can make use of their players should they so desire. Likewise, Soccer and Baseball teams have a long history of academies to develop home grown talent. However, Overwatch failed to implement a complete Academy structure across the board and now it is coming back to hurt them in the long run.

Perhaps even sadder than the teams leaving, is the thought that these Academy teams, for the most part, performed well. Yes, there were stragglers like GGEA (Academy to the Houston Outlaws), Eternal Academy (of the Paris Eternal), and even the British Hurricane (Academy to the London Spitfire) but these are the rare exceptions. British Hurricane bounced back and came second in Europe this season, Team Envy (Academy of the Dallas Fuel) won NA WEST this season, and of course Fusion University ( of the Philadelphia Fusion) have won 4 straight Contenders titles and went on a 33 game win streak; one that was ended by the now disbanded Mayhem Academy. In fact, in North America, China, Korea, and Europe, only 3 of the 12 Academy teams didn’t make Contenders Playoffs this season. There is clear success in these Academy systems, yet they are leaving, and Blizzard is letting them go.

How to Maintain Academic Retention.

Academy teams pay their players. Meanwhile, other orgs are struggling to find sponsors or are playing broke as a whole. This is no small matter to see Academy teams leave. And while there is no doubt that there are many issues with Blizzard’s Path to Pro for Overwatch; this particular issue is easily fixable. And its fixable in a few steps

1. Require Academy Teams to Play in Contenders if They are not Dropped Into Trials.

2. Enforce Import Restriction Rules.

3. If an Academy Team Drops to Trials Require Them to Replace 3 Players.

4. If an Academy Team Loses in Trials They must Either Pay a Fee to Drop from Contenders, or Pick up a Winning Trials Team Under their Banner with no Removal of Staff or Players for 1 Season.

Let me break these down in more detail.

Requiring Academies to play in Contenders means more organized teams, more paid players, and more job/ league security. Understand other orgs have paid their players but it less consistent than the Academy teams.

Enforcing Import Restriction Rules is something League of Legends does where say a team from North America can only have 3 players from outside regions at most. I think this is something that should also be implemented into the Overwatch League in order to maintain regional diversity without having teams like the London Spitfire who have no European players on their roster. (Yes, they were successful and won Season 1 but its bad business and takes away from the point of localization of teams.)

An Academy that drops to Trials but makes it back to Contenders must drop 3 players. This policy keeps rosters shifting, allows for the addition of fresh talent while not allowing teams to perform at a mediocre level at no cost to them. Job security isn’t free and should require performance to maintain it.

If an Academy loses in Trials they either pay a fee to drop from contenders or buy out a winning Trials team, with the condition that the full staff and roster are unremovable for 1 season outside of a Contenders judicial review. This allows successful teams to stay together and get paid while not losing their Managerial integrity. Not to mention it serves as a punishment for underperforming for the Academy team across the board. It also provides job security for the potentially bought out team with no cutting of staff or players without a valid cause supported by a judicial review from the Contenders staff.

Academic Review

All in all, Blizzard’s path to pro continues to struggle. Less Open Divisions, fragile job security, and Academy teams dropping out leaves major questions for if they will ever be fixed, or if Blizzard will continue to try and cover these issue up with LAN based Showcases. Sadly, only time will tell.