After less than a month of having its new Dota 2 roster together, HellRaisers has already decided it’s time to move on and try something new following its 13th-place finish in the EPIC League Closed Qualifier.
HellRaisers had a strong start to the year, but outside of a few nice placements in smaller events, the team struggled to remain relevant in a constantly evolving European/CIS Dota 2 scene.
As a result of the team’s poor performance overall and its recent failure to qualify or even compete for a spot in the EPIC League, the organization has decided to move on from three of its players. Rinat “KingR” Abdullin, who only joined the team on Oct. 29, has already been released to free agency.
Arslan “xannii” Shadjanov and Gleb “Funn1k” Lipatnikov have been moved to the inactive roster and put up for transfer, meaning the organization is actively taking offers for the players.
“As you know, the last month was not the best for the Dota 2 team,” HellRaisers CEO Oleksii “Magician” Slabukhin said. “We trained, collected the feel of the team, and my intuition suggests that there are now two options: either now the team will continue playing or we need to make the crucial decision which we knew about before.”
The plan was always to see how this roster performed at various events, according to Magician. And now that they’ve come in last place at the past two events, HellRaisers is making changes. The CEO said he “got flashbacks” to the team’s 0-8 losing streak in Major and Minor qualifiers from the last Dota Pro Circuit season.
The team will now focus on building around captain Alexander “Nix” Levin and Ilya “Lil” Ilyuk moving forward. No further information about the team’s status has been given, but Magician promised more updates by the end of the week.
