Three-time Call of Duty World Champion Damon ‘Karma’ Barlow has responded after former teammate Ian ‘Crimsix’ Porter revealed how the OpTic Gaming roster fell apart throughout the Black Ops 4 season.
Now signed for the Seattle franchise, alongside an entirely new roster, Karma is heading into the 2020 franchised league without any of his former OpTic teammates.
Crimsix has joined Dallas Empire, while Scump has confirmed his departure from OpTic with an announcement of his new team presumably coming soon.
This OpTic roster started strong, but failed to reach another grand final in Black Ops 4.
On October 23, Crimsix opened up about the roster’s turbulent Black Ops 4 season – which started so well with a win at CWL Las Vegas, but quickly went downhill, as they failed to reach another grand final.
Crimsix pointed out “ego” was a major factor, a lot of which came from fans “fans who only look at numbers and stats.” Presumably, he was referring mainly to young star Brandon ‘Dashy’ Otell, who had by far the best raw numbers on OpTic throughout the season.
- Read More: Dashy fires back at Crimsix
Karma was more measured in his response, stating he didn’t want to ruin any friendships, but confirmed “things were really bad last year”.
I dont want to ruin any friendships man. I still like everyone but some things were just really bad last year.
— Damon B (@DKarma) October 23, 2019
When asked if he had any personal beef with Scump too, the Seattle player simply said that he had “no issues”, and thinks it best that they have split.
However, he did express frustration at how the split happened, explaining the he “had to reach out to (Dashy) and (TJHaLy) to see if I had a spot on the team even though I knew I didn’t but I had already been through that so I didn’t really care.”
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I mean I have no issues. I think it’s better were on our own teams. Our time has passed. Only thing that sucks is I had to reach out to brandon and teej to see if I had a spot on the team even though I knew I didn’t but I had already been through that so I didn’t really care.
— Damon B (@DKarma) October 23, 2019
He later explained that one of the primary issues for the roster was their roles, as Karma was required to use the Ruin operator with an AR, rather than an SMG (the Saug), as most teams were doing.
Karma believes that this clash of roles had a direct impact on the team’s performance, and that he had asked Scump to run a Maddox instead, but that he refused.
Really one of the biggest issues is none of us could run grapple and I didn’t want to use a saug LOL
— Damon B (@DKarma) October 23, 2019
idk lol. I wanted him to run a maddox tbh but he didn’t like it. I think he would’ve fried with it if he did.
— Damon B (@DKarma) October 23, 2019
Although Scump’s new team has not yet been confirmed, rumors suggest that he could be reuniting with another of his former OpTic teammates, Matthew ‘FormaL’ Piper, for the 2020 season.
Karma now has new faces on his team, playing alongside Ian ‘Enable’ Wyatt, Bryan ‘Apathy’ Zhelyazkov, Sam ‘Octane’ Larew and Josiah ‘Slacked’ Berry, for Seattle.
Seeing these former OpTic players go head-to-head in the new Call of Duty League is already set to be a great rivalry, with the storylines writing themselves.
