In the Overwatch League, professionals often take breaks or leave entirely. One player, however, has taken a very special timeout – right in the middle of a forest somewhere in Sweden.
This is how the “timeout” went: The Swedish DPS player Simon “snillo” Ekström was unavailable for the entire off-season before Season 2 from December 2018 to March 2019, not reachable for the Overwatch League and his team.
His teammate Elijah “Elk” Gallagher explained in a stream of the streamer Avast why snillo was unreachable and where he was:
Translation: “When I arrived at the team house at the start of Season 2 and asked where snillo was, they told me they couldn’t reach him. When he finally showed up, he said he had been living with his grandmother in a forest in Sweden and collecting mushrooms.”
When asked where he now is, in the off-season before Season 3 of the OWL, Elk replied: “Probably back in Sweden in the forest.”
Who is snillo? Snillo is a player of the OWL team Philadelphia Fusion, where he played as part of the roster during the opening season, but was only deployed in the middle of the season. With the start of Season 2 in 2019, he moved to Fusion’s developmental team, Fusion University, which has already had issues due to its name.
The team itself is one of the strongest in its field. It was able to win all first places in its major and minor tournament games in the Contenders in 2019, except for Season 2 in Korea – here without snillo. The team switched to the Korean league, because it became too good for the West at some point.
The OWL and its players
It is not uncommon for players to take a break from the Overwatch League. Players regularly leave temporarily or permanently:
- the professional Dafran left to “chill” on Twitch
- before him, the professional Seagull left to focus full-time on his stream
- the professional Pine had to take a break due to depression
Seagull explained in his streams in August 2019, why so many professionals are quitting: Overwatch is simply too complex compared to other shooters like CS:GO or eSports titles like LoL and Dota. With every balancing, too much changes.
However, it is not just the players who are leaving the OWL. Several staff members are leaving too:
