The legendary king of CoD, Seth "Scump" Abner, retired from his CDL team on Tuesday, January 17. But while the community mourn, the team are scrambling to bring back the recently-dropped Dashy.
After a very fractious Stage 1, Scump has retired in the middle of the Stage 2 Qualifiers. He said back in October 2022 that he would quit at the end of 2023, but instead he's retiring early.
As Scump explained, seeing Huke and Shotzzy on the SMGs — the role Scump played throughout his career — he realized he wasn't "fast like that anymore". Probably true, his pace was getting slow for an SMG, but he went out as a top-tier player all the same (although, thank god we didn't pick him for our Stage 2 Fantasy Team).
Before we go much further, watch his retirement speech:
Best teammate anyone could ever wish for it was a fkn pleasure happy to see this new chapter in his life https://t.co/XuMPxaxqrh
— OpTic Shotzzy (@Shotzzy) January 17, 2023
It's hard to get through, although it must have been even harder for Dashy. Imagine the pressure on your shoulders after Scump says he's falling "so you can rise"...
What Will Scump Do Now?
While Scump is still technically the substitute player for OpTic Texas, he won't be scrimming anymore, he'll be streaming a variety of games and co-streaming CDL matches instead. He likes streaming Tarkov quite a lot, and we expect him to play a lot of Warzone with Karma, but we don't expect him to ever seriously compete again.
If you want to catch his co-stream for the CDL matches, you can find a complete schedule of matches here, and here's a link to Scump's Twitch.
What Will OpTic Texas Do Now?
This is a sad and historic moment, but once the OpTic squad have wiped away their tears they have to start figuring out what they will do next. They play Seattle this Friday (1:30 p.m. PT / 4:30 p.m. ET / 9:30 p.m. GMT), so they're going to need to get their team together pretty f*cking quickly.
Now, despite dropping Dashy less than a week ago, he is their only option right now, and so he will play for them this weekend. But long term? We would be shocked if they could make that work for more than a couple of weekends. The atmosphere must be terrible after all the stuff Dashy revealed when he was dropped.
As soon as we have more news on who OpTic are targeting next, we'll update you via our Rostermania hub.
If you ever want to play like the king, you're going to need the right tools for the job: