Just a couple of hours ago, the esports organization Dignitas announced that they will be letting go of Kevin "POISED" Ngo and Ryan "shanks" Ngo from their official Valorant roster.
In both of the tweets, Dignitas have stated that their reasons for dropping the two core members of the Valorant squad lie in the fact that both the org and the players wanted to go their separate ways.
As both Shanks and POISED were coming off of a ‘Trial Period’ with Dignitas, it really didn’t surprise fans that Dignitas made the decision that they did.
However, what really irked them was the fact that Dignitas was playing really well as a team, with POISED and Shanks in the roster.
They were the Team Homeless members from the Valorant Ignition Series PAX Invitational, the very same players who dumpstered on T1 during the qualifiers.
So why are Dignitas suddenly letting them go?
The shadow of the CS: GO match-fixing scandal falls on Valorant
Now, if you weren’t exactly living under a rock, then you will probably know about the latest scandal that the CS: GO esports scene is going through at the moment.
The CS: GO professional scene is witnessing a lot of allegations floating its way over the past couple of days. The accusations are destabilizing enough, and pretty much shaking the core roots and the foundations of the entire CS: GO esports scene.
However, the problem and the solution of it may not be contained in Valve’s shooter in itself, and the issues might just spill over the CS: GO bucket and into that of Valorant.
The latest match-fixing scandals which set off 15 ongoing investigations by the Esports Integrity Commission or the ESIC, might have severe repercussions for Valorant’s competitive scene.
Now, ESIC is yet to announce the final results of their investigation. However, among the players who are being investigated, some names have popped up.
Jake Lucky, in one of his The Esports Talk videos, goes into a lot of depth about how problematic the CS: GO match-fixing scandal is, and how big of a repercussion it can have for the Valorant pro scene.
In the video, he shows a short clip of ‘Ze Pug Godz Cooper’s stream and we hear names like Dignitas’ Shanks and FaZe Clan’s Marved pop up as possible pros who are currently being investigated for the match-fixing scandal.
Hence, we feel that there is more to the Dignitas Valorant roster changes than what meets the eye. And we will be getting some conclusive information, once ESIC finished with their official investigation into the matter.
All in all, it just feels like the iBUYPOWER scandal all over again, and that wasn’t exactly a good phase that the CS: GO esports scene went through.