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Everything you missed at the VALORANT Champions Finals 2023 weekend
It’s over – the VALORANT Champions Tour has wrapped up for yet another season, and this year’s victor has been crowned.
Evil Geniuses that lifted the trophy in Los Angeles, netting a $1 million grand prize and making history, and it all began with a relatively weak start to the season that ultimately turned around and saw EG dominate the competition.
Now, we’re here to sum up everything that happened at VALORANT Champions 2023. It was a busy period that revealed record-breaking figures, shock celebrity attendances, and telling revelations of Agent pick rates. This year’s VALORANT Champions event was one of the most popular to date for the young competitive title, and here are some of the reasons why.
Evil Geniuses Fought To Make History
Evil Geniuses doesn’t have a stunning track record where the VALORANT Champions Tour is concerned, but this season, the team defied all odds to pull off something of a Cinderella story. In a relatively clean sweep, the team secured the first international title that a North American team has secured in VALORANT since OpTic Gaming won the Reykjavik Masters in April 2022.
Image Credit: Evil Geniuses
One standout presence within the Evil Geniuses squad was the team’s ‘6th player’ – Christine ‘Potter’ Chi, esports coach extraordinaire. With her impeccable timing and game knowledge, Potter managed to guide the squad to victory – aided by the likes of the stunning new talents from Demon1. She became the first female esports coach in history to win a major esports championship.
And on the subject of Demon1, this unlikely character entered the competition as a freshly-picked villain for EG, but he ended the tournament with the top VLR rating, the best KD ratio, and more kills-per-round and a higher headshot percentage than any other competitor.
Demon, indeed.
Related: How to Get Better Aim in VALORANT
Appearances And Absences
The VALORANT Champions 2023 event was a stunner for many more reasons, though. For instance, there were some high-profile personalities in attendance that turned heads, something which isn’t all that typical for an esports event. At the event, the likes of Elon Musk and Ben Affleck were seen parading around with their children, enjoying the esports spectacle and talking to fans.
Musk’s presence alone was enough to shed light on the VALORANT Champions Tour outside of the core esports community, with tens of millions of social media impressions being picked up just because the man himself attended the event.
In terms of absences, another historic statistic of sorts was secured when the new Sentinel, Deadlock, became the only Agent in the entire game to not be picked during this year’s VALORANT Champions Tour. It seems that nobody wanted to run the new Agent because her utility just isn’t up to scratch compared to other Agents in the game, and she remained the sole in-game character to not see any combat.
Related: How to Unlock More VALORANT Skins
To The Future
Image Credit: Riot Games
So, Evil Geniuses now joins a very prestigious list of teams – the VALORANT Champions. There have been just three in the short history of VALORANT: Acend (2021), LOUD (2022), and now Evil Geniuses (2023). It’s a limited club, but that’s only given VALORANT’s fresh status as a competitive title.
Following the tournament, it was revealed that this year’s VALORANT Champions bundle – the cosmetics pack that’s sold in the store to raise money for participating teams – hit a record-high sales figure. It pulled in more than $20 million, a staggering sum that saw the competing teams rewarded handsomely and proving that there’s so much value in VALORANT’s community.
With a new map (Sunset) dropping today, August 28th, new Agents on the horizon, constant changes being made by Riot, and the competitive community soaring, it’s safe to say that there is an epic future in store for VALORANT Champions 2024 and for its esports community.
