In what is probably the most expected roster move in North America, Soniqs has dropped its Dota 2 roster and has not shared plans to continue in the space after just two months of being active.
The team’s roster, made up of a Quincy Crew core cobbled together across multiple seasons and iterations, bombed out of The International 2022 early. Not only did this mean the team failed to secure a spot in the main event, but it also represented the group’s worst placement at a TI where the players shared a connection to the QC name.
After shuffling its roster around post their ninth-place finish at TI9, Quinn and YawaR brought in three new players to compete in the 2022 Dota Pro Circuit. After a quick start, things started falling apart for the roster. The core duo of the team then made another change, kicking MiLAN, ponlo, and KheZu from the team and bringing back a few familiar faces.
With LESLÃO and MSS back in the fold and Fata joining up too, QC made it to the Arlington Major and signed on to compete under the Soniqs banner. Unfortunately, they were among the first teams eliminated at the Major and had to qualify for TI11 out of the NA regional qualifiers.
At TI, the team was unable to capitalize on their positioning in the group stage, losing a key game that eventually led to a tiebreaker and elimination from the event. Not only that, but LESLÃO was caught live on camera with an item featuring a racially insensitive name and was quickly released from his contract with the team.
With their poor performance, especially compared to their top-nine run at TI10, the writing was on the wall for most fans who have followed QC’s bad luck with sponsorships.
Just over the last four years, QC’s roster has been sponsored by four different organizations, Forward Gaming, Newbee, Chaos Esports Club, and Soniqs. Forward Gaming shut down before TI9 and left the door open for Newbee to step in, Chaos couldn’t maintain the team during the COVID pandemic, and both Newbee and Soniqs dropped the team immediately after their respective TI season ended.
The team actually made the decision to keep the QC name at TI10 after so many short partnerships, and it appears that the stack might be making a comeback once again in an NA scene that could look completely different from previous years.
That could end up being false too, as there is no guarantee Quinna and YawaR will want to run things back again—and if they do, it might be with three new players surrounding them and under a new banner too. We will just have to wait for the post-TI11 roster shuffle to settle first.
Soniqs also didn’t outright say that the organization will leave Dota after such a short time in the space, but the long-term track record for organizations who jump in and sponsor a team for TI and then drop them in NA isn’t great.
