After a fourth-placed finish in North America in the final season of the Pro League, the former Team Reciprocity roster has found a new home with Oxygen Esports of Hearthstone and League of Legends fame, currently in the midst of a rebrand from its former "Team Genji" name. What's more, Oxygen is also set to sign the Rocket League team of Reciprocity.
Following North America's first international victory in 19 months at DreamHack Montreal 2018 under the Cloud9 organisation, Team Reciprocity continued their good performance under their new org with a remarkable semi-final exit at the 2019 Six Invitational, where they finished as the top NA team and lost to just the eventual champions.
Following this, the team came within three points from qualifying for the Season 9 Pro League Finals in Milan, before falling to both TSM and SSG in the Raleigh Major Closed Qualifiers as they failed to qualify for last year's Six Major event.
Despite this, they did manage to attend two Minor events in this time -- one in the form of DreamHack Valencia where they went out in the quarter-finals to Looking For Org (now known as Rogue), and then in the form of their title defence at DreamHack Montreal 2019 where they failed to get out of the group stages following defeats to SSG and the North American Rogue roster.
FoxA at DreamHack Valencia 2019.
Despite these setbacks, Reciprocity was still performing strongly in the Pro League as they finished Season 10 in second place in North America to qualify for the Finals in Tokoname. Here, they defeated a Ninjas in Pyjamas lineup who were playing with two substitutes before falling in the semi-finals to the eventual champions once again in a fairly close 8-7, 7-1, 7-5 scoreline.
Despite this performance, the team opted to replace MarkTheShark and the DarkZero-bound Skys with VertcL and Nyx shortly after these Finals, with this new lineup helping them reach their first grand-final since joining the organisation at the 2019 US Nationals. However, they then lost to SSG in a straight 3-0 scoreline.
LaXInG at the Season 10 Pro League Finals.
Three months later, the team once again attended the Six Invitational, however, here they found much less success as they exited in the group stage against G2 and BDS as the worst-performing NA team. They responded to this by making two more changes, replacing Nyx and Retro with Slashug and b1ologics, to create the current lineup.
As Season 11 came to a close, however, Team Reciprocity's owner, Chad Larsson, announced that the ongoing financial collapse caused by the coronavirus epidemic forced the organisation to drop their lineup, leading the team to hunt for a new organisation to represent. This search has now come to an end, with Oxygen Esports picking up the North Americans as confirmed by the Ubisoft blogpost detailing the future of North American competition.
While Oxygen Esports is a somewhat successful organisation, it is unlikely many in the Rainbow Six scene would have heard of them as they specialise in "digital collectable card games", with this pickup being their first FPS team under their banner. What's more, the team is currently in the middle of a rebrand from its former "Team Genji" moniker, but has only changed its Twitter handle to reflect this change so far and has been using its old branding everywhere else.
The organisation's biggest team is in Hearthstone, where they currently have five professional players from across four regions (from Germany, Argentina, the USA and Korea), with these players leading the organisation to become the top team in the 2018 season. Oxygen also had a League of Legends (LoL) team, but saw its players go its separate ways in the January of this year.
Now, however, in what seems to be an apparent package deal with Team Reciprocity, Oxygen is also entering the Rocket League competitive scene.
As well as this, they also have teams in both Magic: The Gathering (MTG) and the card game, "Eternal" as well as a total of 26 streamers primarily from games such as LoL, MTG, Hearthstone, and Eternal, as well as two small FPS streamers playing PUBG and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (CS: GO).
This pickup is, therefore, a fairly big departure from the organisation's usual acquisitions as they jump into shooters with the fourth-placed North American team. This move means the organisation will need to provide their new lineup with a team house and support from within Las Vegas and will very likely be included in the upcoming Pilot Program, meaning we'll be seeing a lot from Oxygen over the next year with their new lineup:
Davide "FoxA" Bucci Gabriel "LaXInG" Mirelez Franklyn "VertcL" Andres Cordero Spencer "Slashug" Oliver Khalil "b1ologic" Pleas Anthony "HOP3Z" Lee (coach) Taylor "Redeemer" Mayeur (coach)
Keep an eye out here at SiegeGG for further transfer updates!