Ex-Forward Gaming Players To Play At Dota 2's The International For Newbee

Ex-Forward Gaming players can now breath a sight of relief and focus on preparing for the Dota 2 The International 2019 tournament. This comes after Newbee revealed it was picking up the roster of the now disbanded team.

Forward Gaming was then composed of players:

• Yawar "YawaR" Hassan
• Quinn "CCnC" Callahan
• Jingjun "Sneyking" Wu
• Arif "MSS" Anwar
• Joahn "pieliedie" Astrom

Throughout the 2018-2019 DPC Season, FG didn't have a really good showing and managed to only land 9-12th place during the EPICENTER Major. However at the North America Qualifiers for TI9, the team dominated the tournament, resulting in winning a slot for TI9.

All was well, but the Dota 2 community couldn't quite prepare for what was to come. Early this week, Forward Gaming CEO David Dashtoyan revealed in a post that he was ceasing operations of the company with all employees being released and all players becoming free agents.

Dashtoyan admitted that he had to close the company as it continued to owe money to the players. In particular, the company was unable to cover for the salaries of the players for July along with $36,000 of the players' share of prize money. This was mainly due to insufficient financial results.

Dashtoyan went on to say that it was back in June when they "informed players about the company’s state and told them that we might shut down the team right after the Epicenter Major." However, the company made the decision to wait until the TI qualifier ended hoping that they would be able to overcome their financial difficulties. "That didn’t happen," he said in the post.

When the news first broke, many in the community knew that it meant that former roster had to look for new sponsors in order to be able to compete. While there were speculations that other NA organizations could pick up the roster, it was a surprise that Chinese team Newbee was the one to make the move.

Newbee had been performing well in tournaments like the recently concluded World Cyber Games 2019. However, Newbee had not been as successful for DPC-related tournaments. All that said, it appears that this deal may not be permanent, and so far is only good for TI9.

Valve has yet to comment on this deal given that the Valve has been hands on this year. In particular, Valve has ruled that only one roster from one organization can participate in TI9.

Regardless, we hope to see the ex-Forward Gaming players play at TI9, as they had in fact earned the right to do so.

The International 2019 begins August 15 in Shanghai.