H3CZ tells story of how Infinite management tried to drop OpTic’s Call of Duty team
Call of Duty roster.
In an episode of his popular Eavesdrop Podcast which released on Monday, May 27, H3CZ, alongside Davis ‘Hitch’ Edwards, discussed some of the difficulties they have encountered working with OpTic’s parent company Infinite Esports, and a specific moment that they attempted to drop their legendary Call of Duty team back in late 2018.
“How many times did we save Infinite from the beginning?” H3CZ asked Hitch. “We’re only going to talk about the one. The one. Where they tried to drop the Call of Duty team.”
Infinite Esports attempted to offload OpTic Gaming’s legendary CoD team.“There were contract issues, but it wasn’t the contract or the players but the people they were represented by that was the issue,” H3CZ stated. “Because of that external factor – that had nothing to do with the players – they got to the point where they didn’t want to deal with that anymore, ‘so we’re going to have to let them go.’”
“So I go in there, and I said: ‘There’s nothing to talk about. We’re not dropping the Call of Duty team, period. I don’t give a fuck. We’re not dropping the team. If they leave, I leave, and everyone else leaves.”
The OpTic Gaming CEO then explained that he asked Infinite to give him the weekend to smooth things over with the team, only to receive a call from the player’s agent on the Saturday who informed H3CZ of an email he received that stated Infinite would find the team “a new home” in two weeks.
H3CZ concluded: “I remember telling them step-by-step why what they were doing was fucked up. And they thought ‘Finally, this is how we get rid of him.’ Twice they tried to get rid of me. I continued to be a pain in their asshole for the rest of time.”
Clip starts at 1:40:42 for mobile users.
Following the blowback from H3CZ about their decision, Infinite held on to the OpTic Gaming Call of Duty squad and saw their decision pay off when the team won CWL Las Vegas back in December 2018.
Hitch confirmed that the players were talking about accepting contracts from other teams at the time though, which shows just how close OpTic Gaming came to losing one of the most legendary teams in all of esports.
Much like this scenario, the future of OpTic Gaming’s Call of Duty lineup remains up in the air, as Infinite Esports continue to try and offload the entire organization, with bids from Immortal and H3CZ himself believed to be two of the possibilities.
Disclaimer: Hector ‘H3CZ’ Rodriguez is a minority shareholder in Dexerto Ltd.