OG announces release of OG Seed due to conflict of interest concerns

OG is pulling back on its plans to operate multiple Dota 2 teams. 

The organization has announced the release of the OG Seed roster. The squad including Zakari William Lee “Zfreek” Freedman and Omar Mohammad “Madara” Dabachachis is set to compete without a sponsor in the immediate future.

“As the new calendar started shaping into regional tournaments, we saw that having two rosters competing in the same tournament created a potential conflict of interest. We worked with other teams and tournament organizers to try to find a solution, but…we realized that it was still probably a little too soon to try to properly implement multi-team ownership,” OG said in a statement.

OG Seed formed around the core of Complexity Gaming’s 2019 roster ahead of the qualifiers for the DreamLeague Season 13 major. The team served a unique role, allowing the OG organization to remain active during the year despite the roster’s unwillingness to compete in anything but the largest Dota 2 events and its general tendency towards lengthy hiatuses.

Despite being affiliated with the most accomplished organization in Dota 2, OG Seed failed to take home any trophies of its own. Its greatest achievement was taking second place at Dota Summit 12. OG’s statement suggest the team will continue competing under a different name.

OG Seed dropped during Valve crackdown on organizations with multilple teams

Multi-team organizations are a huge part of the Dota 2 scene. 

Top Chinese brands have fielded numerous top teams within the same game, with the greatest example of this being Vici Gaming sending three teams to compete at The International 2018. This wasn’t a uniquely Chinese phenomenon, as teams like Na’Vi North America and MVP HOT6ix have competed at The International along with their sister teams.

Valve put an end to this in both Dota 2 and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive in 2018, prohibiting organizations from fielding multiple teams within the same event due to potential conflicts of interest. This was then extended further, most notably to players owning stakes in other competing organizations.

In late 2019 a number of Chinese organizations began forming academy teams again, and in 2020 western organizations began doing the same. That steady creep also occurred in CSGO, which prompted a major crackdown by Valve.

While it is unclear whether these cases are linked, there is a strong possibility that this is the case. If so, expect a number of similar announcements to come from other organizations in the near future.