Despite being placed ahead of eUnited in the North American League after the organization dropped its Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege roster, Tempo Storm has decided to follow suit and leave the scene too.
Tempo cited the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic as the main reason for departing Rainbow Six. The organization is currently working with the players and Ubisoft to explore ways the roster can continue competing in the NAL moving forward.
Ubisoft confirmed that Tempo made their intent to release the roster and leave the Rainbow Six esports scene clear to the company early on. As a result, Ubisoft has granted Tempo additional time to investigate a potential transfer for its NAL license to an interested party.
A team must own a license to operate within the Rainbow Six competitions run by Ubisoft, including the NAL. Ubisoft clarified this when eUnited decided to leave the competitive scene because the company owns the license and without it, a roster is not eligible to play even if they qualified for the competition properly.
Tempo receiving this extension means that the organization is working to try and find a way for its former roster to remain competitive while also selling its Ubisoft approved NAL license to another organization.
Just like with Evil Geniuses, Luminosity, and eUnited, if Tempo can’t find someone to sell the license to, it will revert back to Ubisoft. This will result in Tempo’s roster no longer being eligible to compete in the NAL until they find another sponsor that also has a license. But they will also need to qualify under that new banner to make it back to where they were at with Tempo.
If Tempo successfully manages to find an organization to purchase its license, the situation will reflect what happened with Team Reciprocity selling its NAL spot to Oxygen Esports, where the roster will move to the new org too.
More details about this situation will be released as Tempo closes on a deal or the license reverts to Ubisoft once this extended period of transfer time expires.