OG sign Filipino Dota 2 roster

OG will now be competing in Southeast Asia after acquiring the Filipino roster of Team Aureus.

OG, one of the most iconic Dota 2 organisations of all time, has moved to Southeast Asia and signed the Filipino roster of Team Aureus. OG's new roster now features carry player John Anthony “Natsumi-” Vargas, mid laner Erin Jasper “Yopaj” Ferrer, offlaner Nikko “Force” Bilocura, position 4 support Timothy “TIMS” Randrup, and position 5 support Rolen Andre Gabriel “Skem” Ong, with Adam “343” Shah as coach.

OG made the announcement on Saturday (8 November), over a week after it disbanded its European roster following an abysmal start to the 2025-2026 competitive season. In a video released alongside the announcement, OG co-founder Sébastien “Ceb” Debs said that they aim to give the Southeast Asian Dota 2 scene “the championship it deserves."

“I think what is super exciting about what is next is that if the SEA region is going to finally get the championship it deserves, I'm sure that will be with OG. And it makes sense because there has always been so much love back and forth. SEA always felt like home to us, and I want to thank all of the SEA fans for the support that you always provided to OG. And now hopefully it will be our time to give this back. And I'm just looking forward to see how far this OG Dota team will go,” said Ceb.

While Ceb's fellow OG co-founder, Johan “N0tail” Sundstein, had apparently stepped down from his role as team coach with the disbandment of the organisation's previous European roster, the two will remain active in assisting the new Filipino roster.

“I'll help as much as I can, Johan will help as much as he can. There's great people, a great group, and I think we have the winning formula. I'm super hyped for what's next,” said Ceb.

OG's new Filipino roster to debut in PGL Wallachia Season 6

OG's acquisition of the Team Aureus roster is looking like a strategic move to give the brand some much-needed exposure and capitalise on The Chiliz Group acquiring a controlling 51% stake in the struggling organisation back in September. The new Filipino OG roster had already qualified to the last three Tier 1 tournaments of 2025: PGL Wallachia Season 6, starting on 15 November; BLAST Slam V, kicking off on 25 November; and DreamLeague Season 27, which is set to begin on 10 December.

After failing to qualify for The International (TI), Dota 2's annual world championship tournament, for three-straight years, OG have made multiple unsuccessful attempts to return to the heights it once enjoyed during their glory days from 2018 to 2019–when they became the first-ever team to raise the Aegis of Champions twice.

In 2025 alone, OG's European roster went through a veritable carousel of players but failed to qualify for any major events and even struggled in Tier 2 tournaments.

The organisation also fielded a South American roster, OG.LATAM, back in April. After bombing out of DreamLeague Season 26 and failing to qualify for TI 2025 and the Esports World Cup 2025, the initial OG.LATAM roster was released. A second roster was then trialed in September, though it also failed to qualify for any notable events–leading to the end of OG's South American experiment in October.

Ceb said he sees “tremendous potential” for the organisation's latest attempt to return to relevance through a Southeast Asian roster. While the region has long been praised for producing talented players, Southeast Asian teams have never been able to achieve the same heights as their counterparts in Europe or China. The highest placement achieved by a Southeast Asian team in TI remains two third-place finishes in TI 2013 by Team Orange, and in TI 2016 by Fnatic.

OG will be looking to tap into the talent in Southeast Asia and provide, according to Ceb, “leadership,” “[a winning] culture,” and “professionalism," among others.

"SEA teams have always been teams to fear and respect, but they never really achieved the results that everybody expected from them. There's always been tremendous potential. And every time we interacted with players, coaches, or with the scene, always the same game came out to us. 'We're missing leadership. We're missing [a winning] culture. We're missing, maybe sometimes, discipline, team aspects, we're missing professionalism,'" said Ceb.

“But the Dota is there, the talent is there. And obviously, we could feel it, competing against them. I think at OG this is what we excelled at. This is also what we had to build for ourselves. You know, going back to [TI 2018], we had the potential, but it was a little bit chaotic, it was all over the place. And we built these things, and it brought us to the higher spheres and to the success that everybody knows about.”

OG's new Filipino Dota 2 roster: