Trig Esports have added Hearthstone to their “portfolio of esports disciplines.” The team will consist of the three top level players who left IHearthU in January.
Daniel “DTwo” Ikuta, Harald “Powder” Gimre and Jan “Faramir” Engelmann will be staying together as a team after all, finding a new home under the banner of Trig Esports.
With Smite, FIFA, League of Legends, and StarCraft 2 players and teams already on board, Hearthstone makes the fifth esport that Trig have extended into in just three months.
“It feels great to join an organization with such massive ambitions as Trig,” Gimre said in a statement, “not just for Hearthstone but for the gaming community as a whole. Everything so far has been really great and we’re all looking forward to a great partnership.”
The move, first reported by GosuGamers, represents the end of six weeks of searching for the three players. Gimre, Ikuta and Engelmann left IHearthU on Jan. 26 following protracted negotiations about their contractual terms.
The players pursued a number of potential new teams, but on Feb. 24 the players told the Daily Dot that they were now searching separately. This position changed within days however, and rumors began to fly online that they had in fact found a new team together. That team turned out to be Trig Esports.
Multiple sources, including one connected to a team who had made an approach to one of the players, commented to the Daily Dot that the players salary demands had been a roadblock with some teams—but that if Trig had in fact met those demands it would put them amongst the best paid players in Hearthstone.
The announcement comes on the heels of a Daily Dot report concerns about Trig’s almost unbelievable ambitions in esports. These include establishing 13 esports venues with capacities of 14,000 around the world, and establishing a League of Legends reality show.
