Overwatch League star player "Sinatraa" is moving to Valorant
He "straight up just lost passion for the game"
It's not even out of beta yet and Valorant is tempting pros from other games into its ranks. San Francisco Shock's star player, Jay "Sinatraa" Won, is the first Overwatch League player to be making the switch, joining up with the Sentinels' new competitive Valorant team. Sinatraa announced his retirement from Overwatch yesterday, saying he "straight up just lost passion for the game".
"Idk what the real killer was for me but maybe it was 2-2-2 lock, maybe it was bans I'm not sure... I just know it was hard for me to log on to play and I didn't have fun in scrims/ranked at all anymore."
These are all fair reasons. While Overwatch introduced things like role locks and hero bans to try and improve on stale metas (remember GOATS?), I can see how these restrictions hold a lot of pro players back.
Still, there's no doubt Sinatraa will be missed by his team and fans alike. After all, he was voted MVP of last year's Overwatch League season, leading San Francisco Shock to victory in the Grand Finals. It's a bit of a weird time for him to announce his departure though, because he's just about to get a special MVP skin in Overwatch to commemorate the 2019 season. I respect it though, he's left his mark, it's time to move on.
His new Sentinels Valorant team so far consists of former Counter-Strike pros Shahzeb “ShahZaM” Khan and Hunter "SicK" Mims, and Jared “Zombs” Gitlin from the Sentinels Apex Legends team. They're on the look-out now for their fifth and final member to fill the squad - I might nominate Matt, he seems pretty good Valorant.
Valorant doesn't actually have a ranked mode just yet for these pros to show off their skills. But according to the game's most recent patch notes, ranked matchmaking and a competitive mode will go live "in the near future".
If you fancy trying out for a new competitive team, we've got loads of guides that might be of use to you. Whether you want to brush up on Valorant weapons, or maybe you need a guide to Valorant team comps, there's plenty here to help with that pro training.
The CS-meets-Overwatch FPS has been insanely popular from the get-go, beating Twitch viewer records just a few days into streams starting. Admittedly, that was likely because millions of people were trying to get the free beta access (which you get from watching the streams), but still, that's a hell of a lot of fans that immediately wanted in.