Overwatch League Cancels Games Amid Coronavirus

The Overwatch League announced Wednesday that the upcoming games in China will be canceled due to the ongoing coronavirus outbreak.

The canceled games affect homestand games — where a series of games is played in each team’s home city — with the Hangzhou Spark, Shanghai Dragons and Chengdu Hunters.

The only remaining team in Asia, the Soul Dynasty, will still host their homestand games in early March. The Overwatch League has not released any information on how they will be rescheduling their matches or their locations.

Eddy Meng, the COO of the Guangzhou Charge, posted Thursday about his struggles with the sudden outbreak of the Coronavirus.

“By Monday morning on January 27, our contingency plan was no longer a contingency — our staff (who were home for the holidays) started to book flights, to check on visa timelines for our Chinese players and staff, and to prepare communication plans around our players moving to South Korea,” Meng wrote in the post.

The third season of the league, which starts in days, will be the first season where the league travels for homestand games. With the outbreak affecting 27 matches over the span of two months, this may affect the leagues big plans. 

Other concerns have also popped up for the Overwatch League. Many big-name casters have announced recently they’re leaving the league for other casting jobs.

The Overwatch League also faced backlash after announcing last month that games will stream on YouTube instead of Twitch. The first two seasons of OWL were streamed on Twitch, the largest gaming live-streaming platform. Fans have posted about their fear of the change in the replies of the announcement tweet OWL made.

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