The Esports Advocate can confirm that Chinese Overwatch League franchise, the Chengdu Hunters, has been disbanded. Sources familiar with the situation in China who asked not to be identified because they were not authorized to speak on the matter, tell TEA that a majority of the organization’s core players have moved over to another OWL team in China—Hangzhou Spark–or are currently free agents.
There has been a lot of speculation that the OWL team operated by Chinese streaming platform Huya had disbanded as far back as late-January when the organization’s Twitter account said goodbye following NetEase and Activision Blizzard’s long-time distribution deal imploding in January, leaving many games such as World of Warcraft, Overwatch 2, StarCraft II, and Hearthstone unavailable for play in China.
“Goodbye and see you again,” the organization tweeted on Jan. 23, adding in a subsequent tweet, “Overwatch 2 has been shut down in mainland China.” That was the last message from the organization on Twitter.
In addition, Chengdu Hunters’ official Weibo account has not posted anything since Dec. 24. “It’s time to say goodbye, and I hope everyone from Chengdu Hunters, players and staff could have a bright future,” Chengdu Hunters Illustrator Maruko wrote on her personal Weibo with a poster featuring Chinese term “再见” (farewell) on March 11. “I knew Chengdu Hunters’ official Weibo would not post it [The disband],” Maruko wrote, referring to Chengdu Hunters.
Because NetEase held the government authorization for these games in China, when it ended its partnership with Activision Blizzard, the publisher couldn’t legally offer any of its games in the region anymore—a situation that it has yet to rectify with a new partner, as of this writing.
It became even more obvious that something was going on with Chengdu Hunters when the Overwatch League issued a statement at the start of the 2023 season on April 13, emphatically stating that—while several Chinese OWL organizations would be participating this year—Chengdu Hunters would not be one of those teams:
“Ahead of the season start 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. We will update the community further when we have more information to share.”
There was also speculation earlier this year that many of the OWL franchises in China would have to relocate in order to compete because Overwatch 2 can’t be legally played in mainland China, but OWL seems to have found some work-arounds for those teams from the region that remain competitive in the league. The community had also hoped that some of these franchises would shift to Valorant, which received approval earlier this year by the Chinese government, and there has been some movement to that effect, as quite a few OWL shoutcasters have already moved over to that game.
Editor’s note: This story was updated to add one word to a sentence for the sake of clarity -“Sources familiar with the situation in China…”
