Immortals, the owners of one of the Los Angeles Overwatch League franchises, have announced the release of flex player hyped. hyped was one of the original members of the Immortals team, when he and the Sodipop roster were picked up last year.
While hyped was not a founding member of Sodipop, he was one of the longest serving members of the team, seeing play on the roster during their first recorded match back in June of 2016. He and Sodipop rose to become one of the most promising lineups in North America when the Overwatch Open rolled around in September, eventually leading to the team's pick up by Immortals. Due to two members on the roster having "hype" in their names, Hype renamed himself to Aythen to avoid confusion.
During Contenders this summer, the team played matches with zero players bearing "hype" in their name. In their first match of Contenders Season One, hyped did not play a single map during the series for the first time since Immortals acquired the roster. In his place stood envy, one of the three Korean players the organization acquired back in June this year.
While Immortals shuffled and experimented with their lineup regularly, giving hyped some opportunities to play, his chances were limited throughout Contenders. hyped never played the entirety of a series, whereas envy played a whole series for four matches. Immortals' CEO Noah Whinston took to Reddit to confirm that the team informed hyped of his impending release weeks before the public announcement, indicating that the team had been planning the move for awhile.
This leaves the Immortals roster with just six players for the Overwatch League, with many teams signing multiple subs before the roster deadline. They may not lack subs for long, however; in the press release announcing hyped's departure, the team declared that it would be announcing its OWL roster on October 24. There's also been speculation fueled by an unconfirmed ESPN report that Immortals may be signing uNKOE and SoOn, who played support and DPS respectively on Rogue, and numlocked, who was last seen on his main tank role on EnVision eSports. None of the reported players have any history in the flex role.
The Immortals roster is now:
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