Cloud9 and yay have reportedly agreed to part ways with each other.
Cloud9, one of the partnered organizations in the VALORANT Champions Tour (VCT) Americas League, is reportedly parting ways with Jaccob "yay" Whiteaker. This is supposedly a mutual parting of ways between yay and the team. It's also allegedly not due to performance-based issues. The news was first reported online by Max "purest" Katz in a Tweet.
Cloud9 and yay
A few days after this, Dot Esports published a report stating that Cloud9 is mutually parting ways with yay. Cloud9 supposedly agreed to sign a release that will terminate yay's contract. While neither yay nor Cloud9 have mentioned anything about this yet, yay has removed the organization's name from his social media. According to Dot Esports, there are no other roster changes to be made and Cloud9 is expected to start planning trials for yay's replacement next week.
While it's unclear as to whether he's joking or not, yay added in his Twitter profile that he is a professional VALORANT player for Moist Esports. Charles "MoistCr1TiKaL" Christopher White Jr. founded Moist Esports, and the organization recently announced that it would be getting into VALORANT. Meme or not, the entire VALORANT community can probably agree that any team would want yay.
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The fantastic VALORANT career of yay
After starting his VALORANT career with Andbox way back in September 2020, yay was signed by Envy in August 2021. The Envy roster had its international debut at Masters Berlin 2021 where they came in second place. At Champions 2021, they had a top-12 finish. The entire roster then became a part of OpTic Gaming after a merger between the two organizations.
In 2022, yay and his team won Masters Reykjavik and managed top-three finishes at both Masters Copenhagen and Champions. They were one of the best VALORANT teams in VCT history.
Once the partnership system was announced, the roster split up. Yay then found a new home at Cloud9. After a great start with a 2-0 win over Pacific titan Paper Rex, the team got knocked out of VCT LOCK//IN by Koreanteam DRX. In Cloud9's game against DRX, yay was the only player on the team with a net-positive kill differential.
Update: On March 1, Cloud9 officially announced that yay is a free agent. They attributed the decision to role issues and said it was a mutual decision. The player himself responded in a tweet saying that both the team and coach agreed with his removal.
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