- Steve "Xcalibur" Ye and Nikola "LeBronDota" Popovi? have departed from B8 Esports.
- Both players made statements about their departure on their social media, but neither seems to bear any grudges against the team or its other players.
We all know that B8 Esports has been having a hard time in recent weeks, losing 24 games in a row and were looking like they just didn’t know what they were doing. The team’s captain Danil "Dendi" Ishutin spoke about possible roster shuffles to fix this. It looks like they’ve finally bit the bullet.
The team’s carry, Steve "Xcalibur" Ye and Position 5 support, Nikola "LeBronDota" Popovi? have departed from the team.
Hence B8 Esports is now left with only three players:
- Danil "Dendi" Ishutin
- Andrey "Ghostik" Kadyk
- Rinat "KingR" Abdullin
The Players' Comments
Commenting on their departures, neither player had anything negative to say about Dendi or B8 Esports.
In a post on Twitter, Xcalibur explained that the lack of preparation and too much psychological damage because of losing so much, was the cause behind this roster shakeup.
“We were invited to lots of tournaments in a row against the best teams in the european & cis region without enough preparation. Once we started losing a lot of games it was hard to recover because of lack of time to practice between the tournaments. How it felt during this rushed period was that we play a series, we lost and we need to think about what to improve on for us to have better results in the next series but the only time we had to try our new ideas was in the next series. We had a lot of games we could’ve, should’ve won but a mix of lack of practice and taking psychological damage from accumulated losses we were not able to play our game. This also unfortunately lead to us having to replace 2 of our players in the middle of it all which only made it worse.”
He also stated that Dendi was still hungry for success.
“Lastly I would like to give a shoutout to Dendi. He was the most hungry player in this team for success even though he has already proved himself in the past and has a place in the hall of fame. Not only that but he was also the most mentally strong player in this team and kept us going during a difficult time. I expect him to reach the top again in the correct environment and I’m sorry that I couldn’t help him with that.”
LeBronDota on the other hand just wished the best of luck for Dendi and B8 Esports.
It is unclear on who will replace these players in the team. Stay tuned to AFK Gaming for more updates on this topic.
