- Team Empire's Dota 2 team will be taking a break after a recent defeat
- Team Empire’s Esports director addresses rumors
- Team Spirit might be one of the reasons for Empire’s break
After a disappointing end of the season, Team Empire’s Dota 2 team will go inactive for an undisclosed length of time.
Team Empire Takes a Long Break
The Russian esports organization announced on Friday that their Dota 2 team will go on an extensive break. This decision comes after the team’s defeat and failure for the third year in a row to qualify for The International 10, which is the season’s culminating tournament.
Empire is one of Dota’s oldest competitors and the inability to qualify for TI10 weighs heavily on the organization. Despite this the team performed relatively well over the past months, consistently placing in the top eight of almost every tournament since the beginning of the year.
Despite their failure to qualify for The International 10, Team Empire did come close during the Eastern European last-chance qualifiers. The team managed to defeat Winstrike Team, Team Unique, Natus Vincere, PuckChamp, and HellRaisers in their lower bracket.
Will There Be a New Roster?
Alexander “StrangeR” Solomonov, Team Empire’s Esports director, made a post on VK addressing many of the rumors surrounding this decision. There was talk that the roster will be completely changed but Solomonov confirmed that Gleb “depressed kid” Zyryanov will be staying in the team.
Solomonov did confirm that there will indeed be changes to the team’s roster, but they will be announced in the future. The following players have been moved to being inactive as the organization is still trying to figure out a new composition – Oleg “sayuw” Kalenbet, Alexey “Smiling Knight” Sviridov, depressed kid, and Ivan “VANSKOR” Skorokhod. The team’s coach, Vladimir “Chappie” Kuzmenko, is also affected by this decision.
The tough decision comes after a very turbulent season for the team. It seems Team Spirit is their arch-rival as when they met them on the big stage, they took the lead with 2-1, but they couldn't close it out. Team spirit managed to turn the tide of battle and finish at 3-2 after the last two maps.
Despite the devastating defeat, Team Empire managed to qualify for ESL One Fall 2021. They reached the play-offs, however, Team Spirit was once again eliminated them from the tournament.
