Head of Valorant esports explains The Guard’s rejection from VCT Americas

Head of Valorant esports, Leo Faria, has detailed The Guard’s messy rejection from VCT Americas and explained the decision to not promote any other teams in their place. 

On August 29, Riot Games made the shock announcement that The Guard will not be participating in VCT Americas next year despite winning the region’s Ascension tournament. Choosing instead to not promote any teams this year. 

In the initial statement, Riot claimed The Guard had “failed to meet the deadline to agree to the Team Participation Agreement of VCT Americas”. As a result, they opted to not promote any Challengers teams for the 2024 and 2025 seasons. 

The situation sent shockwaves through the Valorant community, with The Guard’s players and coach even finding out about the news on Twitter without any early warning.

Hey everyone. This situation is very unfortunate and none of us wanted this outcome. We designed Ascension hoping to see new teams and players joining our International Leagues every year, and it’s disheartening to see this happening in year one. That said, I want to share some… https://t.co/pdXWDVtP2Z

— Leo Faria (@lhfaria) August 30, 2023

Head of Valorant esports explains The Guard’s rejection from VCT Americas

Eight hours after the announcement, Head of Valorant esports Leo Faria then went to Twitter to explain Riot’s decision in further detail.

“Every team that qualified for Ascension signed the Team Participation Agreement prior to the start of the tournament, and signatures were held in escrow,” he explained.

“Immediately after the conclusion of Ascension, we started the onboarding process with the three winning teams, expecting them to release their signatures from escrow to finalize their promotion to the International Leagues.

“Unfortunately, this was never completed by The Guard, and after two months and several follow-ups, we had to make a very hard decision in order to not compromise the start of the season next year.” 

Riot considered promoting M80 or allowing The Guard’s roster to search for another organization

Faria then explained that Riot had considered three different options. One would have allowed the five players on The Guard to be picked up by a new organization. Another was to promote the Ascension runner-up (which would be M80). While the final option was to not promote any team. Riot went with the third choice.

Riot had already prepared for a free-agent team to win Ascension, according to Faria, however, because the squad had played through Challengers and Ascension under The Guard, it would potentially open the door for VCT slots to be sold, which Riot does not want.

With the other possible outcome, one where M80 was promoted without winning Ascension, Faria stressed it would “create questionable precedents.

“The point of Ascension is to reward performance, and as great and talented as M80 is, qualifying a team that didn’t win the tournament defeats that purpose. Promotion is earned in-game, not out of it.” 

Faria did not mention if 2024’s Ascension would add an extra slot to make up for the rejection. As it stands at the time of writing, VCT America’s 2024 season will be played with only 10 teams, whereas Pacific and EMEA will have 11.