Valorant Champions 2021 Winners Quit VCT Citing ‘Decay’ of Tier-2 Scene

ACEND Club, winners of the inaugural Valorant Champions tournament, has announced their departure from VCT ahead of the 2025 season.

In a recent statement posted on the organization’s official Twitter handle, ACEND takes a shot at the tier-2 scene of Valorant, describing the shooter’s competitive ecosystem as “hostile”.

“The tier-2 ecosystem has been showing alarming signs of decay this year with tournament organizers going out of business, not paying out prize money, and canceling tournaments,” the statement reads.

Despite winning the first Valorant Champions tournament alongside a Masters event, ACEND was not chosen to be a part of the 30 franchised teams for the VCT international leagues in 2022.

Regardless, the org continued to invest in Valorant esports, competing in the Central and Eastern European Challengers League. Acend narrowly missed promotion to VCT EMEA in 2023, losing to Gentle Mates in the Ascension lower bracket final.

“The increasingly hostile ecosystem has simply made it untenable to responsibly run a team,” the statement further said.

While ACEND’s competitive Valorant team will no longer be active, the organization’s content team will continue to produce content for fans, as confirmed by a staff member on Reddit.