Valorant pros react as yay leaves Cloud9: “They did you dirty”
Colin Young-Wolff/Riot GamesCloud9 officially confirmed that Jaccob ‘yay’ Whiteaker has parted ways with the organization. The professional Valorant community rallied around yay after he announced his free-agent status.
Cloud9 officially confirmed multiple reports around its star Valorant player yay by announcing that he and the team have parted ways. After the announcement came out, in addition to yay putting out his own statement that he was now a free agent, multiple fans and fellow players rallied around him online.
The Valorant community reacts to Cloud9 dropping yay
Many of yay’s former teammates from his time on OpTic Gaming responded to his post with thoughtful words, including Austin ‘crashies’ Roberts and Pujan ‘FNS’ Mehta.
“They did you dirty, head up brotha,” crashies said.
Other pros, like LOUD’s Erick ‘aspas’ Santos and DRX’s Byung-chul ‘BuZz’ Yu, also sent best wishes to the world-class player.
Others went to Cloud9’s own statement to voice their displeasure with the move, accusing the team of either not being fully transparent with the move or the esports landscape in general.
“You don’t bench the best player in the world from the year prior because of role issues, and you certainly don’t DROP them entirely letting them become unrestricted F/A. Somebody really really dropped the ball and screwed up here,” Valorant caster Arten ‘Ballatw’ Esa said in response to Cloud9’s statement.
Fellow Valorant analyst Jessica ‘Jess’ Bolden also commented on the move, contextualizing it within the larger esports market downturn that has been going in.
“Esports is just a f***ing nightmare. No one makes decisions that make sense. This year has just been people dropping the ball on incredibly valuable people and it’s exhausting,” Jess said.
Cloud9 will go into the mid-season transfer window looking to replace yay and may also potentially make other roster moves in the future.