VALORANT Champions has delivered great action so far. We rundown the storylines that have happened and what to watch for as we head into the playoffs.
Six days of VALORANT are now behind us. VALORANT Champions Berlin has been incredibly exciting, with close games and surprising results. EMEA looks to be the best region in the game, by far. North America's time has come. Meanwhile, LATAM looks better than ever, and Brazil has been the epicenter of a social media war.
Here's a quick recap of the major storylines of the event, and how fans can view them looking forward.
EMEA dominates at VALORANT Champions while North America falters
North America won Masters Reykjavik. Masters Berlin went the way of Europe. And now at Champions, one region has clearly surged ahead of the other. North America is struggling. Reykjavik champions Sentinels went out in the group stage. Meanwhile, EMEA's four representatives each finished first in their group. A perfect 4/4.
European teams have looked better on every level. Even teams for whom expectations were low, in particular Fnatic, have looked tremendous this tournament. Meanwhile, NA has faltered. Sentinels lost in groups, Envy looked bad against Acend and are staring down elimination against X10 CRIT. Out of all the North American squads, Cloud9 Blue has looked the best. But they also have the toughest matchup to exit their group - a date with Korean champions Vision Strikers.
It's looking dire for North America at VALORANT Champions. We'll see if Envy or Cloud9 can get out of groups, but even still - EMEA dominance may have arrived.
Brazil vs the world
Over the last few days of the event, a war on social media has been unleashed due to multiple events regarding the Brazilian teams at the event.
The first was the Vivo Keyd situation. In their opening game against Acend, Jonathan "JhoW" Gloria used a banned Cypher camera spot on Breeze for six rounds. Initially, Riot Games awarded the map win to Acend, which caused an uproar among the Brazilian community. #justiceforvivokeyd trended worldwide on Twitter.
Riot would eventually roll back the ruling, setting up a replay of the map with Acend having a 7-0 lead. Acend would win, but not by much. Acend would then go on to win the group, though, while VK went out last to X10 CRIT.
The second thing was twitter comments made by Sentinels players, specifically Jared "zombs" Gitlin.
Brazilian fans, influencers, and even the CEO of FURIA were calling on Riot to ban zombs for the above comment. While nothing came of it, it ignited a war of words on social media that is still going.
Just how good can LATAM be?
While North America, and Sentinels, faltered, it was KRÜ Esports who benefited. The Latin American team has attended every international event so far, and even made the quarterfinals at Masters Berlin. Here, though, they look just as good, if not better.
KRÜ's LATAM superteam has turned heads with great gameplay against some tournament favourites. Now the discussion is being had - should LATAM be getting more seeds next year?
Ultimately, LATAM's Australs lost to FURIA in the South America Last Chance Qualifier Grand Finals. But they beat other Brazilian teams along the way, some of whom had played in international tournaments. If KRÜ can get past Fnatic in the quarterfinals, we may see some changes to seeding for 2022 go in LATAM's favour.
Stay tuned to Esports.gg for the latest VALORANT news and updates, and full coverage of VALORANT Champions Berlin.