Shocking news came from the French esports scene this week. Long-standing team Millenium announced it’s shutting down by the end of the year. In the blog post dated Oct. 20, CEO and Founder of Millenium, Cédric Page, explained how franchising in many of the large esports titles and increased competition for staff were among the reasons for France’s biggest esports organisation to shut its doors.
History
The Millenium organisation has been around since 2002, when it started out as a community for the French gaming scene. Cédric Page explained further that his intent with the community was to share his passion of gaming with like-minded individuals, but it quickly grew into something much bigger. The community grew into a forum for gamers, millenium.org. This and the community grew into the organisation Millenium, founded in 2006.
Success stories
Over the years, Millenium has put forward some of the best in esports. The most successful players that have been part of Millenium include 2016 Hearthstone world champion, Pavel; one of StarCraft’s best, ShoWTime; CoD professional Tommey; and the current mid laner for Fnatic in League of Legends. Some of the older competitors of esports also have their roots with Millenium. Soaz and Yellowstar, both long known for competing on the Fnatic lineup, were part of Millenium at the start of their esports career.
StarCraft
The same goes for Misfits Hans Sama, who before joining Misfits competed in the Challenger series for the Millenium team. Millenium also had strong roots in the StarCraft scene fielding the legacy players Stêphano and ToD. During his time with Millenium, Stêphano won the North American Star League Season 3, the IGN ProLeague season 3, and many other tournaments. It made him one of the most successful StarCraft players of all time, winning nearly $300,000 USD playing the game in his career so far.  Â
Millenium’s other StarCraft player is ToD. ToD had a few good performances in his time with the team, winning the Millenium Cup and the ESL Pro Series France X back in 2011. ToD has since moved on from playing competitively and is one of the main casters in the StarCraft scene.
Millenium current rosters
Millenium is currently most known for their Rainbow Six team. Currently the Six squad is participating in the Six Major Paris, a $350,000 USD prize pool Rainbow Six Siege event. This is the seventh Major Millenium has participated in, of which they won both DreamHack Austin 2018 and 6cup 2017. Another genre this team has a strong presence in is the battle royale scene, fielding two teams in Fortnite and Player Unknown’s Battleground.
Until the contracts for the teams of Millenium run out, they will be limited to playing in French events as the goal of performing internationally isn’t possible anymore for the organisation. The website Millenium.org and their social media pages will remain active until the end of the year as well. The French scene will miss Millenium, but I have no doubt the players will find a new place in the ever-growing esports scene.
Want to stay up to date with the esports scene? Today’s coverage follows the new Coach of TSM, the story of Fnatic and Cloud9 making the semi-finals of Worlds 2018, and more!
(Image credit: Millenium.org)
Published: Oct 22, 2018 01:10 pm