Acend disbanded the Halo line-up

European esports organization Acend has announced it is parting ways with its Halo roster. In addition, the club decided to leave the discipline, citing the poor development of the ecosystem by the developers and organizers of the HCS series. In a statement, Acend spoke about all the challenges she faced while interacting with 343 Industries, revealing the specific reasons behind her departure from the scene.

It is with great sadness that we announce our departure from Halo today. First of all, we want to be clear that this decision is due to our experience with 343 Industries and within the Halo esports ecosystem, not the players. We really enjoyed working with them. We believed in them and re-signed contracts for 2023 a few months ago: we are sad that they are leaving the organization.

First, it's important to us that the scene can provide a sustainable environment that encourages organizations to join and stay on the scene. We don't think that's how it's going to be, and it's hard for us to assess our future given how the Halo esports scene is currently managed. Over the past year, we have faced a number of issues related to decision making and people responsible for the competitive scene.

Our main problem was incredibly poor communication. Naturally, we were disappointed that we were bypassed as partners. Regardless of the decision, we've doubled our stage support by increasing the budget per division.

In return, we asked for feedback on what we could improve in order to plan our future on stage. In response, we have received no response to our letters despite numerous attempts, and have instead received only hearsay feedback from other organizations. Moreover, at our first meetings we were promised an open dialogue, but all attempts to contact in the future were ignored.

By planning ahead, we tried to get more information about upcoming tournaments, schedules and plans of 343 Industries. However, all our requests were ignored. In turn, we can't make informed decisions about our team's budget and progress without a roadmap or schedule for next year.

We hope that going forward players will find nothing but success in their careers as they have already proven themselves to be among the best in the game and should be treated accordingly. We thank everyone for the support we received while on stage.

The Acend organization has maintained the strongest roster in Europe, winning multiple HCS 2021-22 Europe Pro Series tournaments last season, as well as winning the Halo Championship Series 2022: Europe Super and Halo Championship Series 2022: Europe Regional Championship.

In addition, the British-French team took part in the Halo Championship Series 2021: Kickoff Major (9th-12th place), Halo Championship Series 2022: Kansas City Major (7th-8th place), Halo Championship Series 2022: Orlando Major (13th 16th place) and Halo World Championship 2022 (9th-12th place).

However, as the club assures, the organizers did not make contact and did not publish any information about the future of the discipline. However, it was hard for Acend to make plans for the future, given all the problems that the organization faced as they performed at a professional level. Also, 343 Industries prevented the club from creating content, since, according to the rules, only partner teams could be behind the scenes of the events.

Summing up all the facts, the European organization decided to leave the stage and say goodbye to its lineup, despite the re-signing of contracts with players for 2023.

Note that Acend's decision to leave the Halo discipline follows similar verdicts from North American organizations. Over the past months, Cloud9, G2 Esports and eUnited have left the scene, also citing many of the problems listed with the organizers.

Acend's latest Halo roster:

• Lqgend
• Respectful
• Sica
• Snipedrone
• KronosZer (head coach)
• Lubiku (analyst)