Earlier in March, Rogue revealed that it was officially leaving the Counter-Strike scene and disbanding its roster. As a result, their ESL Pro League Americas slot was also vacated, leaving an open spot for any team to join the league. ESL has finally announced that Luminosity will be replacing Rogue in the first stage of the tournament.
ESL said that Luminosity had “proven to be a stable roster over the past months and are the strongest candidate to complete the North American team lineup.” They were also the “best North American team in the ESL World Ranking which is not part of Pro League,” which made them an easy choice for the league.
ESL also mentioned that it did originally invite fellow all-Brazilian organization FURIA Esports, but unfortunately, “scheduling conflicts” have prevented them from accepting the invitation. Luminosity were the second-best choice as a result.
Rogue’s decision to drop out of the ESL Pro League and disband its CS:GO team stemmed from the fact that the team was about to lose two key players in Mathias “MSL” Lauridsen and Nikolaj “niko” Kristensen. Due to this, the team explained that they didn’t want to rebuild their roster again.
Meanwhile, this will be Luminosity’s first foray into the ESL Pro League. The organization’s roster consists of Gabriel “NEKIZ” Schenato, in-game leader Lucas “steel” Lopes, AWPer Henrique “HEN1” Teles, his brother Lucas “LUCAS1” Teles, and former MIBR player Ricardo “boltz” Prass.
