The Guard, an esports organization with teams in many of the most prominent esports, has seemingly laid off every single employee on its content, social, talent, and creative teams, multiple people within the company are reporting today.
The news was first made public by one of the organization’s apparel designers, who tweeted that “everyone’s position” at The Guard had been eliminated. A few minutes later, a media personality for the Guard, Hunter Grooms, also tweeted that there had been mass layoffs.
At first, fans on social media were panicked when one former employee claimed that every single employee had been laid off from the company, but Grooms went on to specify that it was the content and creative staff who were let go. Currently, it seems that the rest of the organizational staff is still employed, and there has been no word from the company about any of the four teams it operates dropping out of their respective esports.
The Guard runs multiple teams across several esports, including Overwatch, Apex Legends, VALORANT, and Call of Duty. All of these teams still have a massive following and are actively competing in tournaments at the time the layoffs occurred.
The Los Angeles-based company has had some success in some of the titles it competes in. Its VALORANT team won stage one Challengers last year in VCT and finished top-eight at Masters, and the Los Angeles Gladiators finished first in several OWL tournaments last year, earning up to $500,000 in prize money for the org. The L.A. Guerrillas also won the Call of Duty League’s second Major last year.
Although the teams all still seem to be operational for now, the news of layoffs doesn’t inspire a lot of confidence in the fans, and they’re waiting to see if any of The Guard’s esports teams drop players in another round of dismissals in the near future.
