The team ran into trouble during the debut of the latest Call of Duty League season
The debut season of the Call of Duty League (CDL) has brought multiple challenges for the eSports organization Seattle Surge. Between major roster changes like the retirement of Damon “Karma” Barlow and several online issues, the team can’t seem to find peace. Given the fact that the roster did not find success while participating in in-person events, fans were expecting that online competitions would favor them more; however, playing online seems to have made Seattle Surge’s problems worse and it ended up forfeiting one game due to severe technical issues.
No one questions the potential this team has and recently, against top team Atlanta FaZe, Surge had amazing momentum during the first two maps. However, after being up 2-0, the team started running into technical issues that ruined everything; even production had to stop the stream for almost one hour. Atlanta FaZe ended up coming back to sweep the team. Even viewers were upset with the results, as they considered that a 50-minute delay was overkill and Seattle didn’t have a chance to perform an upset.
This whole situation was added to the CDL’s perceived lack of competitive integrity, and Seattle Surge’s star player, Sam “Octane” Larew, spoke about this situation on his social media account before deleting the posts shortly after. However, there is some speculation that those comments most likely led to Octane being fined by the CDL. Regardless, the concerns regarding integrity continue to appear, particularly during the last game Seattle had against the London Royal Ravens. The team started a little slow and lost the Azir Cave Hardpoint and the St. Petrograd Search and Destroy before mounting a comeback. When things were going great for the team after recovering from the slow start, it all went downhill, as one of Seattle’s players was disconnected from the lobby, leaving the team at a disadvantage in a four versus five situation for most of the map.
