The spirit of North American Dota 2 is dwindling yet again. One of its staple players, Quinn Callahan, officially made the move to Europe and joined Gaimin Gladiators today.
This comes after more than a month of speculation that the former Quincy Crew core of Quinn and YawaR would finally break up following the end of its tenure with Soniqs and a poor showing at The International 11—where they were one of the first four teams eliminated in the group stage.
Quinn was arguably the single best NA player and embodied the region’s playstyle in how he carried himself both in-game and on camera, occasionally just giving into rage and diving at any enemies or key objectives in his path. This will also be just his second time competing outside of NA if you count his brief two-month stint with paiN X in South America back in late 2018.
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He will bring a new dynamic to a GG squad that kicked its previous longtime midlaner and parted ways with its similarly tenured coach, though it is unlikely he will take the Quinoa nickname his new captain Celery gave him in the introduction video.
With this move, NA loses another key component out of its top rotations while Europe gains one more of the top frontliners in the world to fill out what is already the most stacked region in Dota. Chalk it up there with Evil Geniuses packing up and moving to SA and TSM going through its own roster shift.
The rest of the former Soniqs roster is still scattered to the wind, though it does look like LESLÃO will remain in NA and join Nouns Esports for the upcoming DPC season despite being dropped for an extremely offensive in-game moment at TI11.