Matthew “FormaL” Piper is back on an OpTic Gaming starting roster.
The organization announced today that it’s moving the legendary console shooter into its Halo Infinite main roster. Halo legend and veteran Justin “iGotUrPistola” Deese has been moved to the bench.
FormaL joins the remaining starting roster in Tommy “Lucid” Wilson, Bradley “aPG” Laws, and Joey “TriPPPeY” Taylor after their recent grand finals run at the HCS NA Regionals at DreamHack Anaheim. At that event, the OpTic roster had a flawless group stage run before running through both eUnited and Sentinels in the upper bracket. They got swept by Cloud9 into the lower bracket but rebounded with a sweep of their own against eUnited. Against C9 in the grand finals, they took two maps off the most dominant team in Halo Infinite but eventually fell in the best-of-seven series.
OpTic re-entered Halo with the launch of Infinite in November but didn’t have an active spot for FormaL, who had just retired from active Call of Duty competition a few months prior. He had a brief stand-in stint for Spacestation Gaming, then joined Sentinels for a longer stint following the HCS’ suspension of Royal 1. FormaL departed Sentinels after the fourth HCS NA Pro Series and announced his desire to keep playing.
With FormaL now stepping into the active roster for OpTic, it moves the legendary iGotUrPistola to the bench. Regarded as one of the game’s greatest players, Pistola has claimed numerous trophies over a decade of competition for teams such as OpTic, C9, Evil Geniuses, Envy, and others. Following OpTic’s announcement, it seems he has no plans of slowing down at age 29, saying on Twitter that he will be “grinding and staying in Halo shape for whatever opportunities come in the future.”
FormaL could make his OpTic Halo debut in just a couple of days at the next HCS NA Open Series event, which is scheduled to begin on Feb. 20.
