Gale Force eSports · @GFeSports
23rd Jun 2016 from TwitLonger
Our Thoughts on Fury's Departure from Gale Force eSports
We would like to address the fans of Gale Force eSports as well as the Heroes community as a whole; I am sure a lot of you are a little confused as to why we let Fury go. Let us start off by saying that his performance in game has nothing to do with why he was removed. Nor was this the case of coming back from Worlds and wanting to changing the roster just for the sake of changing the roster. Fury has played well and has been such a huge part of why we qualified and how special this team has been. For this we are ever so grateful to have had the time to spend with Fury and watch him grow as a player and as a teammate. The decision to remove him was not made lightly.
That being said, as we are sure anyone reading this heard, we removed Fury “because of his girlfriend”. She has always been very kind and nice and she herself never tried to wedge herself between the team and Fury. This is not about her, it’s about Fury.
When we put this team together some players were skeptical to play with Fury because of previous stints on teams where he had personal outside issues. He reportedly let that spill into his performance in game and it affected his desire and ability to play and be productive with his team. We spoke to him more than once about his commitment level and he assured us this would not be an issue and that he was going to show everyone how much he cared about this game. We put our reservations aside and told the team that everyone deserves a chance to be in a different environment and see how things go.
Many people know that most of the players on our team are in relationships. We are not against our players being in relationships, and this was not a personal attack on his. Our team’s attitude is to show the same amount of dedication to the game as one would do for their job or career. Unfortunately, a number of players felt like Fury was letting his relationship interfere with his work. This created tension at times and occasionally influenced the team atmosphere in a negative way, which was not something we could overlook because of our belief in team chemistry being of utmost importance.
One example of this would be when he stayed in Texas for an extra 10 days after Dreamhack Austin to spend time with his sister and his girlfriend. We asked if he could still scrim with the team and he said yes. He had a laptop capable of running HotS with him. Despite all that, he missed out on a full 10 days of scrims with the team, which is simply unacceptable.
Regardless, this decision was tough for everyone involved. Fury is very kind and has a good heart. We are confident he won’t have any trouble finding another team and we truly wish him the best.