Building an Overwatch team has been a hazardous journey for the organisation of mousesports. Original team captain frag^m stated his intentions back in July, but was twice removed from potential rosters before the org settled on the most recent iteration which they fielded at DreamHack Winter. This week, mousesports announced that their roster of CWoosH and friends had decided to leave the organisation, having received an “ambitious offer” from a new organisation, Riders.

mousesports has become a global name in esports after years spent building the brand. So why have the players decided to leave mouz and join an organisation without brand recognition or a known reputation? CWoosH explained, saying, “We loved our time at mousesports, they treated us really well but we got a very ambitious offer from this new org that we couldn't say no to.”

Delving a little deeper, he revealed that Riders is a brand new Spanish esports organisation that has yet to announce its arrival onto the scene; an announcement is expected to hit on the 10th January.

According to CWoosH, Riders is an organisation that has been built by veterans of esports from a range of games, who have all come together to form a “power team”. The Overwatch players were involved in several meetings and proof of concepts before being persuaded by Riders’ offer. “What they are offering us will help us grow and focus 100% on Overwatch which is what our team has always wanted to do,” he explained.

In addition to changing organisation, the team also recently saw major roster shifts. Two players were changed immediately after the team’s reasonable showing at DreamHack; Bur1x, the flex support, and Aseal, the main tank, parted with ex-mouz to bring in Dante and hURRe as their respective replacements. Dante was noticed as a player who consistently hit top placements in each season with a ton of individual skill, while hURRe had been bouncing around several potential teams without finding a home that fit his talent.

A month later, conflicts from outside gaming hit their Lucio Divinius and the team had to find another replacement. They found Neptuno, a fiery Spaniard with former CS 1.6 and LoL experience to bind the final Riders roster together.

The Riders roster has yet to be truly tested, primarily due to the lack of tournaments in Europe since November. Since the end of DreamHack Winter, Europe has seen only a smattering of small tournaments to satiate the talent pool there, while the action has been happening in North America and Korea. Riders described the smaller tournaments with their lower level of competition as, “no trial by fire by any means”, saying, “We are still waiting for our chance to prove ourselves in a big tournament. We are doing well in scrims against top european teams, but scrims don’t really matter in the end.”

When asked how the team feels competing in Europe at the moment, at a time when teams and tournaments are flooding out of the region, CWoosH said:

It's dark at the moment, but hopefully the light will return to Europe. I personally hope that Europe will get it together and give us, the players, the fans of Overwatch what we want, cuz Europe is really competitive still. I have high hopes but you never know how it's gonna look in 6 months. Hopefully we will have a strong European scene as we have right now. It would be a mistake not to foster it.

The new Riders roster is:

  • Andreas "Logix" Berghmans (dps)
  • Johan "CWoosH" Klingestedt (dps)
  • Finnbjörn "Finnsi" Jónasson (flex)
  • Niko "hURRe" Huttu (tank)
  • Dante "Dante" Zegveld (flex support)
  • Alberto "Neptuno" Gonzalez (support)

EDIT: The announcement of the new organisation Riders has been pushed back to January 15th.