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NLaaeR retires from Overwatch League

He claims coach Sephy made him feel unmotivated, along with a late release notice from Atlanta Reign, but Sephy has his own side of the story.

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Former Atlanta Reign player Ilya 'NLaaeR' Koppalov has retired from the Overwatch League (thanks, Dot Esports), saying that Reign's coach Brad 'Sephy' Rajani made him unmotivated over the course of 2019.

NLaaeR also says that Blizzard didn't respond quickly to player feedback, and that coaching staff were delayed in talking to him about his contract. He claims he was told that his contract would be renewed for 2020, but didn't get any word after that.

Another part of the statement claims Reign told him he'd be released on November 6, which was short notice and made his chances of getting another team to pick him up very slim.

"It was 100% our intention to resign Nlaaer until we were able to secure [Hugo 'SharP' Sahlberg] at the very last minute," Sephy said in his own statement, adding that he reached out to six other teams for NLaaeR.

"I would personally love to see a better system in place, specifically one that disallows any player signings until all options are either exercised or not. This would protect the careers of players caught in the "maybe" category, such as Nlaaer, by forcing teams to fish or cut bait, and then allowing for a more robust tryout process in the off-season, instead of the rush to sign we saw this last fall."

Would you like to see this system too?

Overwatch
Photo: Atlanta Reign

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