This week was a big week for Vainglory fans! Well, I guess it was big for those that have secured the golden ticket that allows you early access to SEMC’s new game mode, 5v5. Overall, most people have been extremely happy with what SEMC was able to accomplish in one year. As long as people remember that this is a brand new game, and issues are to be expected. Some think SEMC has missed their mark, but it is way to early to judge that. This week was not a complete positive one for the game of Vainglory. One evening, while I was at work, my phone was being blown up with alerts. Normally if this happens, something big has happened. I checked my phone to see text messages, discord messages, and Twitter notifications saying this crazy thing that Cloud9 had pulled out of Vainglory. I was like no, that’s not possible. But I was sadly mistaken, or was I?

I immediatly head to Twitter to check my feed. I quickly find three tweets that all had a similar message, “No longer with Cloud9”.

Immediately, people start throwing questions out asking if Cloud9 pulled out of Vainglory? I head to their main page, along with C9Jack’s page to find nothing. So no confirmation or PR statement to discuss what is happening. To see all three players tweet that out at the same time was strange. It was like they all got a text from C9Ian saying something like, Cloud9 isn’t coming back to VG, explore other options. No one knows for sure what is going on or if they really did completely back out of Vainglory, but one can speculate.

This isn’t the first organization to enter and leave Vainglory. Some examples would include big orgs like Team Secret, Tempo Storm, Immortals, and now Cloud9. Yet, why would a successful team like Cloud9 just leave before 5v5 starts? 5v5 could be the push Vainglory needs to reach the next level in esports. Time will tell, but maybe they do not want to stick around for it. Cloud9 had a rough start with the first team they acquired, Nemesis. After Hardek and LostBoyToph left, enter the Gabe’s (Vizzle & Skool). Their synergy immediately took off and the guys started playing great together.

Image from iLoveJoesph Twitter

They casually won the first two Unified Live Finals for spring and summer season. Sounds like success to me! Then to go into worlds as a favorite to win? Seems to me like success! What about losing to the world champions Tribe Gaming in the semis? That’s still pretty close to success, disappointing, but still close. Point is, the Cloud9 roster did great things in 2017. So I think we can cross of the possibility of Cloud9 picking up a new roster.

In past history, teams have dropped a roster in order to pick up a better one, that may have more future success. The three guys they just dropped, are the future success. When Team Secret dropped their all-star roster, the three players (Mowglie, Kvalafar, TetnoJJ) eventually went their separate ways. With 5v5 just being released and all teams on the look for the best players to get their hands on, it is interesting to see what will happen. Flashx, from TSM, had to shed a little fun on the situation.

In all honesty, this is not to good for Vainglory if Cloud9 does step away from the game. I would imagine a team will take their place, but who? If Cloud9 is out, then Vainglory8 just became Vainglory7. If a team snags all three members from C9, then do they own that Vainglory8 spot? Really interested to see how this will play out. With all of the excitement building up to what seems to be most likely announcements from SEMC on esports next week, things just got more interesting.

On twitter I exchanged tweets with Brad from Shatter The Vain, he mentioned something that was interesting.

He first mentioned time in this tweet which is what got me thinking, how much time will there be? This was one of the things I mentioned that we were unsure of heading into esports of 2018. I was under the impression that spring season would be the start of Vainglory 5v5 esports. But what if they just skipped spring season? Now whether the reasoning's behind it, some people may not want to see that. We have to imagine that Cloud9 is aware of decision going on with SEMC when it comes to esports. Maybe something was happening that they did not agree with? For instance, the time before the game fully kicks back up again. This is when Brad’s other tweet got me thinking.

Would teams be able to pay pro players to be practicing and skrimming for a few months with no serious tournaments happening? I am unsure of how that would completely work out, but it is worth speculating. I know Cloud9 just won a major in CS:GO, and their League of Legends team is off to a decent start in the new NA LCS, so it would be disappointing seeing them step away from VG. Especially if a rumor I heard is at all true.

Some where in the many spaces I take in content, I saw a post (or tweet) that C9 was going to Arena of Valor. Now they could certainly do both, but if they only wanted to focus on one, which one would they choose? Shortly before I started writing this, Arena of Valor made an announcement in which our friends at Mobile eSports News picked up on.

$500,000 is a lot of money for the first big AoV tournament. Luckily for AoV, no matter how I feel about their game, has the largest company behind them, Tecent. They are able to achieve things like this, unlike a small company such as SEMC. I do hope Cloud9 understands the future capability of Vainglory’s esports scene. No matter what happens, I’d like to see the three guys stick together. They have really great synergy, and what looks like an even better bond.

Makes this tweet a little more sad, considering the players may have known it was coming.

No need to fear though, SuiJeneris made an announcement that he left Team Liquid. He always has his hands in something interesting, so maybe he will bring someone into Vainglory?

This is another article to build the hype for this coming Thursday, February 8th, in which we will get some answers to the future. Make sure you watch the event on twitch if you cannot attend the event in San Francisco! twitch.tv/vainglory

Thanks for reading! I got a little wordy on this write up, but a lot happened! As always, you can follow the Time For Rolling podcast to get more information on Vainglory esports. Also, our other links on twitter and Patreon!

-Endless55