Head of Valorant eSports Leo Faria addresses The Guard’s rejection from VCT Americas

Fans finally get to hear from the Valorant eSports Head

Head of Valorant eSports Leo Faria addresses The Guard’s rejection from VCT Americas

A lot of drama has unpacked in the NA Valorant eSports realm. Riot Games has revealed that The Guard has failed to meet the deadline to agree to the Team Participation Agreement for VCT Americas and will not be competing in the 2024 VCT Americas League. It had released a lot of backlash from the Valorant community as the players were left out. Leo Faria, the head of Valorant eSports, has publicly and personally addressed the issue.

The shocking news on August 29th left fans disappointed. Despite The Guard securing their place in the VCT 2024 through hard work by winning the region’s Ascension Tournament, things went south. Many pro players and analysts reacted to this unexpected news and criticized the organization in and out for what they did and what was going to happen with players.

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The backlash caused had even raised the attention of America’s Valorant Players Association. The AVPA had called out Riot Games and The Guard for not being transparent. They even offered a solution to the players through 3rd party organizations. The AVPA had sent out an extended statement from their Executive Council to help the players have their voices heard.

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Head of Valorant eSports explains The Guards’ situation

The Guard, Valorant team
The Guard, Valorant team

Due to the constant backlash and many answered questions, Leo Faria, the Head of Valorant eSports addressed the situation. He took to Twitter to explain the whole situation and even offered an alternative to the outlook of promoting the teams. Leo suggested not promoting any teams this year. He mentions how “we considered promoting the runner-up M80, however, that would also 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”

He then clarified in the same tweet, “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 to not compromise the start of the season next year.” 

The cleanup from the Head of Valorant eSport proved vital to promoting fairness, as many fans seem to agree. However, many others took the opportunity to lash out at eSports, claiming fairness was not something they were familiar with. He ended off by saying he regretted the decision; however, they won’t be able to qualify the Guards this year.

Despite a successful Valorant Champions 2023 Grand Final, VCT 2024 seems to be off to a bad start. However, some users can emphasize the responsibility not taken by The Guards. Nonetheless, at the end of the day, the players should not have to face consequences and this is what is being discussed to hopefully get resolved.

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