Overwatch League 2023 Playoffs seeding chaos has fans furious once again

Overwatch League’s 2023 Playoffs seeding chaos is causing even more confusion and has fans furious once again.

With the 2023 Overwatch League season culminating in the year-end Playoffs and Grand Finals, all eyes are on the final eight teams. However, the tournament is already off to a rocky start. 

Confusion arose when the community had its first look into the new post-season bracket, which segments the teams into two groups, the top two from each facing off in a single elimination bracket. A departure from the previous year’s double-elim bracket. 

Causing more chaos was the APAC group’s seeding. Seoul Infernal was given APAC’s top seed, which left Hangzhou Spark, who actually performed the best throughout the East Knockouts, without consideration. Now, another wave of confusion is stirring the pot once more.

Overwatch League Playoffs seeding blunders cause chaos 

Besides APAC’s questionable seeding out the gate, the West’s seeding has now also come into question. In a report by GGRecon, they point out that London Spitfire, the last Western team to qualify for the Playoffs, is the West’s third seed. 

This Playoffs seeding meant that Boston Uprising and Houston Outlaws, who historically performed better than London throughout the year, were given the lower seeds.

As explained by GGRecon’s report, the seeding was determined not based on merit throughout the season, but rather by the order in which the teams were picked during the Playoffs drafts. 

This means that because Atlanta Reign and Seoul Infernal wanted to avoid Florida Mayhem and London first, both teams who were drafted up front were given the third and fourth seed respectively. 

As explained by Florida Mayhem’s head coach Jordan “Gunba” Graham to GGRecon, the seeding is important as it allows the higher seed to pick the first map in the series. “The seeding influences the map selection process in a way that it hasn’t done previously,” he said. 

The advantage goes beyond in-game map selections. The area in which teams can practice in is limited to four teams at a time. However, according to Gunba, seeding determines when a team can practice, which means lower-seed teams could have lower-quality scrims. 

“It’s important because the seeding as per the selection process influences your [Players Practice Area]. Our PPA allocation has all of the good NA teams in it and we can scrim them,” Gunba told GGRecon. “That allocation was influenced by this [seeding] decision and that wasn’t fair.” 

The community’s reaction was one of outage. Boston Uprising’s coach, Park “KariV: Young-seo said of the seeding, “We work hard all year for a good record to impress the fans, but I guess that doesn’t matter for map pick in this league.” 

Another fan said on Twitter, “Honestly insane how OWL decided to use some dumb*** seeding thing rather than the normal method which basically every playoff [competition] ever uses. Genuinely insane how poorly this season of OWL has been managed.”