European esports organisation ACEND Club has announced its departure from Halo esports, with its CEO Benjamin ‘bencb’ Rolle posting a lengthy explanation of alleged poor league management and communication from game developer 343 Industries.
In a statement on Twitter, Rolle commented that he did not feel that 343 and HCS understood how to create an attractive esports ecosystem for organisations “especially outside of the North American region and partnership programme”.
ACEND Club missed out on 343’s partnership programme for the upcoming Halo Championship Series. Another European esports team, Team Quadrant, was added after the initial round of teams. Despite, this, ACEND stated that it would continue to field a roster for the game.
Continuing his statement on Twitter, Rolle added that his team’s primary issue was the “incredibly poor communication”. He said that while his team redoubled efforts to support its Halo outfit in spite of not being partnered, ACEND had not received information from 343 on how to improve as an organisation since being rejected.
Rolle also described instances where ACEND had struggled to make content because only partnered teams were allowed backstage to access players. As a European team, ACEND reportedly had to spend fairly heavily on content because of the additional cost of flying content producers to events in the US.
The 2022 World Championship finals for Halo were held in Washington, Seattle, which would compound issues for European teams because of its distance from Europe and ACEND’s headquarters in Austria.
To that point, Rolle felt that European esports was not receiving enough attention from Halo esports. Rolle commented that his team really believed that “with some support, Halo could grow to become a successful esports title across multiple regions.”
Rolle concluded by wishing his players success in future careers and noting his sadness that ‘Halo veterans’ were alleging similar mistakes had been made with Halo Infinite as had been made before with ‘other Halo titles’.
ACEND now fields five roster across four games, all of them first-person shooters.
Halo Esports and 343 have been approached for comment and this article will be updated accordingly if a response is provided.
