Miraculous Youngster officially disband, withdraw from Nexus Cup playoffs

Miraculous Youngster have announced that their Overwatch roster is disbanding, effective immediately. The announcement also details that the team has withdrawn from the Nexus Cup Annual Finals. This news follows the organisation's announcement last month, in which the team revealed that it was experiencing financial struggles, although the team had not completely disbanded at that point in time. At least one member of the roster will join another Chinese Overwatch squad.

MY dominated the Chinese scene following their victory in the Nexus Cup Summer. The team's stacked track record includes first place finishes in the Premier Series Summer and Premier Series Grand Finals, as well as a 3rd-4th place finish in the APAC Premier. No players on the team were picked up by China's Overwatch League franchise, the Shanghai Dragons, despite this success.

The death of Miraculous Youngster's Overwatch squad adds to one of the many controversies that are the focal point of discussion in the Chinese scene at the moment, including criticism in relation to the operation of China's World Cup committee and the selection process for the Shanghai Dragons. In other news, Lawrence Chi has announced that he is stepping down from his role as Blizzard China's Senior Director of Esports.

Chinese viewership will undoubtedly be a key factor in determining the success of the Overwatch Leauge. As competition heats up in the Chinese esports scene, with Player Unknown Battlegrounds rapidly growing popularity, 2018 will be a crucial year for Blizzard in China.

Well, MY actually announced it "unofficially" weeks before. The scene now in China is quite complicated, since Chinese players are competing in a different environment than players of other regions. I would say NetEase, the company running Battle.net in China, is not working well to keep the teams alive. They are not able to organize sufficient and good matches to develop Chinese OW, and they are not communicating with Blizzard to deal with disaster on gaming franchises brought by OWL, while Chinese player are not competing with players in other region and earn from games other than local tournaments (It is true China get a large population base, but it does not necessarily mean an ample amount of tournaments to keep eSports going).