Just a day removed from the M80 Esports organization’s acquisition of a competitive Overwatch 2 roster, the team has already parted ways with one of its players.
M80 has officially parted ways with Samuel “s9mm” Santos effective today, in response to screenshots allegedly showing the player and other former Overwatch League pros using racial slurs repeatedly in a Discord group chat. M80 CEO Marco Mereu confirmed to Dot Esports the same screenshots were provided to the organization today, and left the organization “no choice but to release the player.”
Update, March 1 at 7:08pm: M80 has parted ways with its entire Overwatch roster according to a new tweet in the evening of March 1.
The org cited “unexpected challenges” as members of the squad, with original plans to build a “cohesive unit” now no longer possible. “Rather than replacing the team with players committed elsewhere, we’ve decided it’s best for all parties to part ways,” the org statement read.
The news came at a terrible time for the rest of the M80 squad, who managed to form a new team, “LFO,” with other players just in time before roster locks came into effect.
The original story continues below.
The screenshots were shared publicly by user @viewerOW on X (formerly Twitter), also known simply as Viewer, who says a “burner account” sent them the alleged images of s9mm, Christian “Ojee” Han, and Michael “mikeyy” Konicki using the n-word repeatedly. Viewer claims the images were taken by French Overwatch World Cup players, as Ojee was allegedly still logged into Discord on one of their PCs.
Viewer also claims they reached out to s9mm, who admitted to using the inappropriate language. They also claimed they were “asked to join a call with an employee of M80 and s9mm” and said that the employee threatened them into not sharing the screenshots. Mereu denied that claim, and told Dot Esports that “no employee of M80 has contacted them,” adding that if someone contacted them on behalf of the players, “they were not from M80.”
M80 is one of a small number of organizations that have already re-entered the competitive Overwatch scene following the dissolution of the Overwatch League and the return to an open ecosystem. Mereu told Dot Esports yesterday he felt that it was a good time to take a “low risk bet” when asked why the organization chose to enter competitive Overwatch.
