Dear fans, this... is hard. Today, our hearts are heavy.

For a full story and memories of good times, check out our CEO's blog post here.

Vainglory is a great game, and SEMC is full of great people. We had some of the best memories in this game. We started with nothing - zero dollars - and we grew to be a top 3 team in Vainglory, dominating for years. At one point, a new rule had to be made to prevent organizations from bringing more than one team to World Championships, after we brought 2 teams and had a chance of seeing both of them in the grand finals!

Vainglory is where we learned how to run teams, too, through a lot of trial and error. It's where we grew as people, as colleagues, and as a community. It's the place where we tested some of our core values - such as the no assh**es rule - and learned to suffer consequences whenever we cut corners. It is thanks to Vainglory that our next teams ran even smoother and started winning even faster. And it is thanks to Vainglory that we could meet each other at so many live events (11, to be exact).

They say all good things come to an end. Today, we announce our departure from our home game for reasons stated in our CEO's blog post. Hopefully, Vainglory prospers and we have an opportunity to return in the future.

We won't pretend like this isn't sad. It is. But it's also bittersweet. The sweet part is that it opens up other opportunities for us due to freed-up human resources. We're very excited to be entering PUBG Mobile imminently, and will be announcement more movements in the mobile space soon!

Our Critical Ops team continues to be the best in the world, consistently placing #1 in all major tournaments available to it, including North American regional championship that finished just this past weekend. We cannot wait to see how Critical Ops evolves this year - the game has so much promise.

While we were born in mobile and love the space, we are growing a significant presence on PC platform as well. Winning an H1PL franchise was a huge step forward for us; not only does it provide us with significantly more revenue, but it also allows us to pursue endemic sponsorships. Our Paladins team is #1 in North America as far as challengers tier goes, and has a chance at being #1 in the world in general. And our Fortnite guys are quite amazing; we're just waiting for Fortnite esports to start. We're not stopping there either - we're looking at some established, large titles right now.

This year, Gankstars' revenue is already guaranteed to be at least triple of last year's, and we're only in March. We are happy about how 2018 is looking and are excited to share some great news with you soon.

Dear gank fam, we are truly sorry that the day has come to say goodbye to a game we know is dear to so many of you... and, we invite you to follow us on our non-Vainglory adventures, which we promise will be fun and plentiful. <3 Join our public discord server here to see a list of our other game servers.

Allow us to close out with a picture from Vainglory World Invitational, the first Vainglory live event in Korea and the place where PwntByUkrainian and IraqiZorro first decided to pursue esports seriously and long-term. This picture is fitting because while closing our Vainglory chapter feels like the end to an era, it is also the beginning of something new and exciting. To our friends at SEMC - "Thank you, and may Vainglory be the great success that you have worked so hard for!".

With love, always, Gankstars. #GSWIN