The Los Angeles Gladiators will be heading into the last stretch of the 2022 Overwatch League season without one of their best snipers.
The team announced today that has mutually parted ways with DPS Lee "ANS" Seon-chang, who has been with the Gladiators since late 2021.
ANS has a long history in the Overwatch League, first joining the San Francisco Shock before the 2020 season. As a relative unknown who made his name in the streaming community, he was a risky pick-up for the Shock. But his consistent and terrifying ability to hit headshots made him a necessary cog in the victory machine. San Francisco went on to take the 2020 Overwatch League championship.
In 2021, ANS retired from professional Overwatch and later sought a career in the VALORANT scene. Though he was picked up by T1 VALORANT shortly after he left Overwatch, he returned to the Shock in the middle of the 2021 season.
When the Los Angeles Gladiators picked up ANS before the 2022 season, it was one of the most high-profile signings in the league. The storyline of an ace sniper leaving one California team for the other seemed too good to be true. He was a usual sight in the team's starting lineup throughout the year, but metas shifted away from his signature heroes over time.
In August, the Gladiators signed hitscan Lee "Happy" Jung-woo from the Washington Justice. With considerable overlap between their hero pools, it's likely that ANS would not have seen playing time for the rest of the season.
The Los Angeles Gladiators won two of the league's tournaments this year, but a recent lack of adaptation to new metas led them to miss last weekend's Summer Showdown. They'll be looking to solidify a first-place seed in the postseason when games resume on Sept. 22.