London Spitfire in a pinch for players close to season start

The Overwatch League is currently gearing up for its fifth and latest season, but it seems like teams are yet to quite pin down their final squads between retirements and controversies. As most pros are still playing with the Overwatch 2 beta that is going to be in use, some teams are still having turnover Most recently, Prov1de has been dropped from London Spitfire. This isn’t down to retirement though, but due to Prov1de’s behavior. This is what’s happened with the player and team:

London Spitfire release Prov1de

London Spitfire has just announced that they’ll be releasing Owen “provide” Warner from their roster just weeks before the season begins. He was part of Spitfire’s main squad and this is a knock to the team. Unfortunately, the reasons behind the bans aren’t very encouraging either. Spitfire provided a statement explaining why the player had been let go:

“We were recently made aware of a code of conduct violation involving one of our contracted players. We have mutually parted ways with Prov1de, effective immediately, following the results of an internal investigation”.

The release of the player comes just before the start of the season, within a month of the May 5^th launch date. The release of the player over a code of conduct violation seems pretty specifically tied to some recent allegations. These have been leveled against the player, claiming he was involved with somebody who was underaged at the time. The tweet included discord screenshots to explain the grooming allegations.

It seems that Spitfire has separately looked at these allegations and came to a clear conclusion. This is probably the reason behind dropping Prov1de from the squad. However, it is the second time that the player has been dropped because of misconduct.

In the past, he was dropped from LA Valiant for saying racial slurs. He claimed to retire from Overwatch after this, before coming up again through the Challengers League. This looks like the final stop for Prov1de, but it wouldn’t be the first time that a team completely ignored his past misconduct.

Spitfire’s roster incomplete as OWL 2022 start looms

Overwatch League teams are currently gearing up for the launch of a new season. Things are due to start off in May, so we don’t have long to wait. London Spitfire hasn’t been on top of the game in recent seasons and another loss to their roster is probably not going to help. With major changes across the game and league though, it’s possible that a newer squad is just what Spitfire needs to turn things around.

They have decent gap to fill in their new roster before the launch of the 2022 season. We’ve seen plenty of retirements lately too, like Super retiring from Overwatch. With the game moving over to a new build of Overwatch 2 with major changes like a 5-v-5 format, it isn’t too surprising that more players are stepping down. Losing Prov1de specifically, puts London in an awkward position of fielding five players and a single support in Oliver “Admiral” Vahar.

With so much uncertainty around rosters, compositions and meta, the team needs to act fast in salvaging what is an already tricky situation. We do hope the team and league bounce back from this mishap and we finally have a solid OWL season to enjoy.