Overwatch pro slams Florida Mayhem for ‘disrespectful’ release

Florida Mayhem pro Adam ‘Adam’ Soong was released from the the Overwatch team on June 15, the company announced through a graphic. The player slammed the update saying that he wasn’t told about the move and that the announcement came off like the organization was trying to hide it.

The Australian pro followed up the tweet by saying he was on a plane home after his release. He was signed to the team on November 9, 2021.

“You guys didn’t have the respect to drop me in person and now you’re trying to hide it without an actual announcement? C’mon,” Adam said on Twitter.

The Florida Mayhem update also included that the team’s flex support player Young-seo ‘KariV’ Park was moving to an assistant coach role and that they have signed Rupal ‘Rupal’ Zaman to fill his spot.

“Following this signing, we’ve made the difficult decision to release Adam from his contract,” the announcement said. “We want to thank him for his contributions this season and wish him the best of luck. With KariV on out coaching staff, we felt confident in signing another rookie talent and continuing to develop our backline.”

Adam only saw competitive play with the Mayhem once in the OWL 2022 Kickoff Clash, when the team lost 1-3 to the Dallas Fuel, who finished as runner-ups in the event. Other than that, the teenager rode the bench for most of his time with the team thanks to the emergence of regular starter Jeong-wan ‘SOMEONE’ Ham.

Florida Mayhem General Manager responds

After Adam aired his grievances online about how his situation was handled, the team’s general manager, and President of Gaming Operations at Misfits Gaming, Albert Yeh responded to fans about the update.

He said in a Twitlonger that the conversation about Adam’s release happened over Discord and that he has always done player releases in person when possible and the he “dropped the ball on this one.”

Yeh explained that the team thought they could find him a team but eventually ran out of time and that the organization was trying something new with the announcement since it involved three “moving pieces.”

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“In hindsight, not having a dedicated release post for Adam was definitely a mistake, and while it’s too late to change that I will make sure to get that right moving forward,” Yeh wrote.

Yeh went on to say that he has talked to Adam about the situation and how it was handled.

“We’ll make sure to fix our release protocols moving forward,” he wrote.