Popular streamer and YouTuber Disguised Toast announced a roster for the upcoming VALORANT Game Changers event yesterday. And though most of the sentiment was excitement, not everyone was thrilled.
About a month ago, the streamer asked the community for suggestions on who the “best” VALORANT players were in the Game Changers scene, which prompted many people to tag their favorite marginalized gendered people in the thread. Notable names in the community came up such as EMUHLEET, rain, Ellie, and artStar, but the roster that was announced was quite far off from any of those suggestions.
Instead, the team looked very different from most of the suggestions that people came up with in the thread. The team consists of QuarterJade, kyedae, Syd, tenzin, and tupperware. The latter two are more known for competitive VALORANT, while the former three are more known as content creators who are talented in VALORANT.
The roster caused a bit of a stir online, with some saying that the lineup was made up of mostly content creators, eliminating a spot on a legit roster for other VALORANT Game Changers hopefuls. Some agreed with the sentiment, while others thought the roster meant more eyeballs on the scene as a whole.
Disguised Toast’s VALORANT Game Changers roster does something unique for the tournament
There are over 2.1 million followers on Twitter between the five members of the roster. Disguised Toast himself has over 1.6 million Twitter followers and over 3.7 million subscribers on YouTube. The star power behind this organization and the Game Changers team is massive.
One of the most glaring hurdles for Game Changers to be successful is its ability to grow an audience. While the numbers are not quite as impressive as the VCT side of competitive VALORANT, last year’s finals amassed over 200,000 peak viewers. This doesn’t hold a candle to 2022’s VCT Champions, which had a peak of over 1.5 million viewers, but it’s nothing to sneeze at.
With Disguised’s roster, that number could grow exponentially. It is true that star power takes away an opportunity from those who might not be as well known, but it might bring in people from outside of the Game Changers community and get them interested in other teams that are competing in the tournament.
This means that the roster is a net positive for the community. Getting more eyes on the Game Changers competitive landscape is only going to cause favorable results, such as an increase in viewership, an increase in the interest of other orgs to get involved in Game Changers and field a roster, and it will help inspire other marginalized gender competitors to pursue their competitive VALORANT goals.
Disguised Toast’s explanation of how the team was formed has quelled some of the naysayers
The org owner himself defended his choice in such a roster on Twitter and it has quelled a little bit of the tension in those who disagreed with the way he went about things.
“A month ago I asked who the best unsigned [Game Changers] player was – I received a lot of great [recommendations] but ultimately felt like there was not enough time to put together a team responsibly in just under a month,” one of the tweets reads. He also proved that he was upfront about what the roster was. Coupled with the lack of time, the lack of ability for Toast to invest a significant amount of money into the team was also a barrier to creating a roster most wanted to see from him.
His explanation seems to indicate that he’s still doing more research and a very different team could come before the second Game Changers tournament. Thus, those who want a roster with some of the most experienced VALORANT players who are currently without a team might get what they ask for if they are patient.
Overall, it seems like Disguised Toast isn’t just throwing money at a team with no regard for what actually makes a good roster function, so fans should extend a little bit of grace before deciding that it’s a bad thing for the community.
