Weibo Gaming swears it’ll be different this time
Three months ago, Xu “Guxue” Qiulin said in a post-match interview that the current Weibo Gaming team was “different” compared to last year. Three months later, Guxue’s words—“今年真的不一样了,” or “this year really is different”—were so well-known among dissatisfied Weibo Gaming fans that the team printed the slogan on a tongue-in-cheek series of coffee mugs.
Has Weibo Gaming really changed? After some roster upgrades in the form of tank Chen “Sunzo” Cheng, main support Lee “LeeSooMin” Soo-min, and flex support Oh “MAKA” Eun-seok, the team had high hopes coming into the 2026 season. They handily won OWCS China Stage 1, their fourth consecutive regional stage championship, but then they finished Champions Clash in 5th-6th place—exactly the same placement they had at the 2025 World Finals.
More bad news for Weibo Gaming fans arrived during OWCS China Stage 2. Weibo lost its first-ever OWCS China match when JD Gaming won 3-1 in a playoff seeding qualifier, breaking a 41-game winning streak. Weibo looked outclassed against JD Gaming’s Symmetra strategies, and they failed to address the problem of Liu “Kaneki” Nian’s Mei on King’s Row.
Weibo later went to five maps against JD Gaming in the Upper Bracket Final, but at the end of the day, Weibo Gaming remained inevitable. By the time the Grand Final rolled around, they had cleaned up their act enough to win in a fairly dominant 4-1.
Weibo Gaming has certainly grown as a team compared to the beginning of the year. Xu “Guxue” Qiulin, who was often benched at the beginning of the stage, proved his worth in Mauga comps. Hitscan DPS Zheng “Shy” Yangjie has developed into a more flexible player, often playing Reaper to accompany Huang “Leave” Xin’s Shion. Finally, Korean imports MAKA and LeeSooMin are now comfortable speaking Mandarin in comms, and the team has become more cohesive as a result.
Weibo Gaming’s first opponent at the Midseason Championship is Team Liquid, the third-place NA team. Weibo has historically beaten North America, to the point that they’ve developed a reputation for knocking NA team Spacestation Gaming out of tournaments. Recent scrim news from Crazy Raccoon player Sung “CH0R0NG” Yoo-min, however, suggests that NA teams will be stronger than one might expect. Only time can tell whether Weibo Gaming will make it out of a notoriously difficult Group A and improve on their Champions Clash performance, or whether Weibo fans will meme Guxue’s confident Stage 1 soundbite into oblivion.