Overwatch League moves matches online, cancels midseason tournament

The Overwatch League has announced that their matches will be moved to online play starting on March 21. In a post on their website, the league explained that they are in the process of reworking the schedule in order to accommodate latency concerns. Currently, not all teams are residing in North America but in Asia. The league's solution to potential latency issues is to split the teams into three different regions and move the matches between opponents in the same groups ahead of the schedule. It is likely that the three regions referred to in the announcement are the North American West Coast, East Coast and Asia. 

Furthermore, the league outright cancelled the midseason tournament, an event that was planned to crown the best team of the first half of the season for which teams would've qualified with their record of the first nine matches. The All-Star event that was supposed to happen during the same time-window was moved to a later date in the postseason. 

Blizzard Entertainment had cancelled all homestands on Wednesday in a reaction to the global pandemic COVID-19. Due to the initial outbreak in the Chinese Wuhan region and the eventual spread all over Asia, the league had already stopped all homestands which were supposed to happen in China and South Korea in February. 

It's currently not known if teams will play from their home bases or if they will be asked to play from the same physical location as both options pose significant logistical challenges. GGRecon will update you on the development and further announcement by the Overwatch League regarding the matter. 

Image courtesy of Blizzard Entertainment