The market for Overwatch talent is moving fast, and another organization jumped into the ring today.
Team YP, the esports wing of pornography site YouPorn, has added an Overwatch squad built from core players who previously wore the Team YP tag competing in Evolve.
French team captain Chairil “Nightwane” Djoehana, Ronny “Roon” Feuz from Switzerland, and David “Spanners” Morley from England all competed together in Evolve where they won the ESL Evolve Major League in 2015. With Overwatch quickly becoming the premier hero shooter and potentially the next big esport title, the trio decided it was time to switch games.
The team recruited the rest of their roster from a variety of backgrounds, pulling the U.K.’s Ben “Meadzz” Mead and Sarmad “JagAren” Jirjes of Sweden from Rainbow 6: Siege while discovering Thor Christer Halvorsen “Toorq” Eikeland of Sweden on the Overwatch ladder.
“We hope that with Team YP’s support we will be able to focus on practice in order to climb the competitive ladder,” said Chairil Djoehana.
So far the team’s short track record shows they have some work to do. Competing under the name Yummy Pepperonis, they played in the first two European qualifiers for the $100,000 Atlantic Showdown at Gamescom next week and lost in the first round each time before winning the chance to compete against some of Europe’s better teams.
The team has “high hopes” to qualify for the next round of the Overwatch Open, the announcement states, but the new Team YP squad likely has some work to do before they can beat experienced closed beta teams like Creation eSports, Ninjas in Pyjamas, and ANOX, who will also seek to qualify this weekend.
Still, Team YP wouldn’t commit to the players if they didn’t have confidence they’ll improve.
“Overwatch has taken the internet by storm,” Team YP’s vice president, Brad Burns, said in the announcement. “We couldn’t be more thrilled by the addition of this game to our ever growing roster.”
