Nor would I if FURIA is next. These orgs have been ass from start to finish competitively and management wise, and someone has to put a stop to it. Their games are boring too cuz you know the other team is winning
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I do NOT feel for KOI
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They made huge gamble on t2 prospects to try to defend their spot at all costs which KOI never did, and are more invested in vct than KOI. I mean come on it's pretty obvious that Riot are not just doing that for the money. It that was the matter they would keep koi cuz if they were even decently succesful they'd make a shit ton of money with all the fans they have. It's just that riot sees m8s has a way more interesting, reliable and trustworthy org to work with than Koi.
That is factually incorrect and Riot knows it. KOI are the current LEC champions and Riot knows they're very much competent, also they're forced to keep working with KOI even if they don't want to. M8 just has more viewers and out of all of the VCT teams they could only find a loophole on KOI's contract to terminate it. I can guarantee if they could they would have chosen someone else
Koi are competent in LEC but obviously they aren't in VCT. 5 min on the val comp reddit are enough to understand it bro come on. You're being deluisional because you want koi in the league and I understand that but Riot are not doing ts just for the fun and giggles, they have good reasons to assume that m8s are a better org in valorant than koi
it's not about performance only, this is why i said management wise too. M8 in 1 Season surpassed KOI in both viewership and skin sales. That's something riot cares about too. Plus, while yeah M8 had a shit season too, they at least got there on their own merits by winning ascension. KOI got a gifted spot for 3 years and did nothing with it
Riot very much knows KOI has an extremely competent management, and they know it first hand because KOI are the current LEC champions in LOL, Riot knows the circumstances why they underperformed in Valorant, but the org is more than competent.
And yes M8 has better numbers than KOI but KOI has better numbers than most other orgs and a bigger costream even without Ibai
The only thing that KOI is better at than other orgs is viewership, their bundle was reportedly dead last this year and they are also the worst team competitively in EMEA during franchising. We can argue whether they are slightly better than other teams and shouldn't have been the first option to be kicked but let's not pretend like it's some wild shit. KOI apparently got several warnings too. It's definitely on them.
That being said, idk if M8 is the best replacement for KOI bc it's true that were just as bad as KOI if not slightly worse but it's an improvement if they care about skin sales and viewership
No that's not what they said
In January 2025, Riot reportedly sent the first real warning to the organization, notifying KOI of its contractual breaches. A few months later, in May, Riot met with Fernando Piquer, Chief Strategy Officer of OverActive, in Berlin to once again discuss these issues. Piquer then outlined the projects and processes the team had implemented to address the situation. From KOI’s perspective, no further warnings came after that meeting. On the contrary, the organization says it had been working actively with Riot on the 2026 bundle, which gave them the impression that their place in the league was no longer in jeopardy.
https://www.sheepesports.com/en/articles/valorant-vct-emea-koi-the-reasons-behind-the-exclusion/en
Warnings about Ibai not being the one streaming, he was off on a mental break. The issue comes after that, KOI offered a solution which Riot seemed to agree with, according to this they were never told "the solution was not good enough" and that is because the solution was indeed good enough Riot just used it becuause they needed to make a spot for M8 and they couldn't break any other teams contract
KOI did not get several warnings, they got one. They had a meeting with Riot and offered a solution Riot accepted until they realized kicking KOI was the only way to get M8 in and that's dealing in bad faith. And Riot knows why KOI didn't perform in Valorant and that they are competent. KOI is always good in all of the games they compete in
m8 basically whined and cried and threw a tantrum for their spot despite the fact it’s their team that sucked
idgaf if you’re just a guest team, you had COMEBACK and MINNY and VEQAJ, if you can’t find any form of success with the level of talent you have, even at least making playoffs, maybe you should in fact just fuck off from val lmao
Mind you this wouldn’t have happened if m8 hadn’t egregiously thrown 3 series because they have the mentality of newborn kittens
bro are you really blaming the ORG for the players choking? im legit so confused, what is this? the players choked. the org did not. whats your problem. you should be pointing your finger at comeback, minny and veqaj for throwing leads in every single map of every single game they played in stage 2. you are braindead.
M8 is getting added to franchising because their fanbase is unfathomably huge and very loyal. thats what franchising is all about, making huge amounts of money in an attempt to make tier 1 valorant sustainable. just look at french orgs in other esports and you will understand why riot made this decision. i understand that it looks really dubious because it looks like riot was hunting for an excuse to get rid of KOI (based on the rumours about "breaking contracts") but you are trying to place blame on the org for something that wasn't their fault. you even acknowledged that the org made some great roster moves with a team almost fully comprising of tier 2 rookies, but you are blaming the org for the failings of the roster. what was the org meant to do about the team chronically choking every single game? You think that M8 whined their way into franchising, when the reality is riot realized there is more money to be made with M8 in franchising compared to other teams in franchising, and they didnt want to wait till 2027 for it so they needed an excuse to get rid of one of the current franchising teams, which they unfortunately found in KOI.
if your fanbase is loyal and you have all that money you wanna spend, then spend it on some good players and coaching staff that can actually do some damage in the league. having less time than anyone else is not an excuse, even if you're not a partnered team, because teams like BBL and NAVI have had miles more success while also having complete rebuilds
you signed good players and still got relegated, that's gg, try again next time, you don't deserve special treatment if you're going to play worse than the team you're replacing while having better talent. m8 cried about wanting to pull out of valorant (which is super funny considering their "unfathomably huge and very loyal fanbase" that is more than capable of supporting them in tier 2) so they put rito in a chokehold so that they practically have no choice but to look into loopholes to kick someone out
the org itself isn't entirely at fault because all they did was just threaten to pull out of the scene, but this wouldn't have happened if they just played better lmao.
What's going to happen is that M8 is going to be KOI 2.0; be completely ass for years and years but because they're partnered, they can afford to be ass all the time. nothing's gonna change and we just kicked someone out for no reason
riot loses out if M8 pulls out of valorant. they are a relatively new but surprisingly successful org, that is only growing in popularity and fame. riot doesnt want M8's possible profit generating potential to be lost, even if they were an ascension team. it's M8's choice if they want to pull out of valorant because they don't see a point of staying in tier 2 which only loses them money. and obviously it is a power play to force riot's hand, but you are acting like M8 did something illegal to get this franchising spot - they only leveraged their position as a big org that deserves franchising and didnt want to wait a whole year to make some money from VCT. sure, it can be gg if M8 signed good players but that doesn't mean they have to stay on a sinking ship in tier 2 with no complete guarantee of ascending, even if they are likely to, because tier 2 orgs lose a lot more money. let's first look at riot and their lust for making profit before criticising M8 for what they did - if riot really cared about the orgs in VCT, what M8 did would not have worked. and once again, the players' performance is not on the org's shoulders. the players flopped and choked, not the management. you need to separate the org and the roster when you talk about M8, otherwise your bias will lead you to blame the management for the roster's failings.
what was M8 doing wrong? were they not supporting their players? did they not make changes to improve? esports is not like a typical job environment. the results are fully on the players' shoulders. all management can do is make changes when things are going catastrophically wrong. did anyone predict the M8 roster to throw every single game in stage 2? they probably looked good by getting leads against the good teams in their group too. and the roster made changes after stage 1 too, showing that the management wanted the team to succeed. even if we use the comparison to a real job, let's think about it like this: if an employee doesn't produce results consistently, they get fired. and do you think any mid stage roster change would have led to M8 winning? not likely. the blame can't really fall on M8's shoulders as if the org management was making the players choke horrendously, and it wasnt even for long enough to see if M8 would have made changes, since they only played 4 games in stage 2.
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