The Real Reason Overwatch League's MVP Just Quit

Jay "Sinatraa" Won is arguably the best pro Overwatch player in the scene. Last year, he was named the MVP of the Overwatch League's 2019 season. However, Sinatraa has just revealed to fans that his Overwatch days are behind him. This is obviously a shock, considering how much time and effort he has put into the game. So what happened?

In a note to his fans and teammates, Sinatraa wrote that he "straight up just lost passion for the game." He mentioned that he couldn't point to any one particular thing to blame for this loss of passion. However, he does mention a distaste for the Hero Pool bans, which is a system that keeps the previous week's four most played characters out of rotation. This is meant to keep the game from getting stale, but it's often frustrating for players who enjoy maining certain characters.

Sinatraa mentions that he got to the point where he wasn't excited to log into the game anymore. He further explained that he "did not make this decision in 1 day it took a full month of non stop thinking every day and sleepless nights from being so stressed."

Sinatraa realized shortly afterwards that he had buried the lede in his preceding note. That's when he shocked fans even further by tweeting, "i forgot to mention im moving to valorant in this but i am so ya."

Meanwhile, esports organization Sentinels announced Sinatraa as a member of its new Valorant team.

So there you have it. Sinatraa finally decided to part ways with the game he'd been playing for years. Instead, he will be embracing Riot Games' new tactical shooter, Valorant. Riot Games just recently announced that Valorant would likely be adding ranked queues in the near future, so it appears as though Sinatraa's plan is to get in on the ground floor of an all-new competitive scene. 

For the most part, fans seemed to be very respectful and supportive of Sinatraa's decision. One fan wrote, "You gotta do what's best for YOU, it's been a pleasure watching you grow as an overwatch player...and I'm even more excited to watch you expand as a gamer." 

It's worth noting that there has been some speculation that Valorant would be dethroning Overwatch's status at some point or another. Last month, Pokimane mentioned in an appearance on Offline TV Podcast that she thought Overwatch's days would be numbered as soon as Valorant was released.

"I think [Valorant] might be the Overwatch killer ... The more I think about it, and I think about Overwatch's decline, [Valorant] is just going to be the last nail in the coffin, really," said Pokimane. Though the other panelists on the podcast seemed a little more on the fence about this idea, everyone agreed unanimously that Overwatch simply wasn't as good as it used to be.

The idea of an Overwatch pro leaving the game for greener pastures isn't without precedent, either. Earlier this month, esports.net's Jordan Ashley reported that many pro gamers were making the switch to Valorant. Ashley chalked a lot of this up to hype over a new game, pointing out that Apex Legends was also poised to be the "Overwatch killer" when it was first launched. While Apex Legends is still going strong despite some balancing issues, it hasn't really come close to fully replacing Overwatch in the eyes of fans. The most that the Apex Legends hype seemed to accomplish was that Fortnite made a ton of changes to compete with the game.

Also, there's a huge amount of risk that naturally comes with jumping from one game to another full-time. This is a particularly difficult prospect when the game is as new as Valorant, which is still in beta testing.  As Jordan Ashley put it, "Valorant will need significant investment to become a mainstream esports title. Riot definitely have both the pockets and the experience to do this. However ... It is just too early to actually figure out if Valorant will ever get a competitive scene big enough to warrant ditching the regular pay and lively scene of Overwatch."

Only time will tell if Valorant will develop a healthy pro scene. It's just too new of a game to say for certain. Still, if his heart wasn't in playing Overwatch anymore, it's commendable that Sinatraa made a decision to follow his passion.

The game's official launch date has yet to be announced. However, if you're interested in checking out Valorant for yourself, keep an eye out for Twitch streamers who are dropping access keys for the beta.