LEC team and former CS:GO Major-winning org finally turns attention toward VALORANT

A global esports organization with a long history in the upper echelon of European League of Legends, and one with a championship pedigree in Counter-Strike, has finally made the jump into VALORANT.

Though the exact scope and direction of its plans are currently unknown, SK Gaming officially announced today that it is entering the VALORANT scene, becoming the last current member of the LEC to jump into the rising tactical FPS game. With Astralis exiting the LEC to be replaced by Karmine Corp, who already competed in VCT EMEA, SK was the last org to make a move toward VALORANT.

Within European League of Legends, SK has been a competitive fixture for over a decade, but despite two Worlds appearances in both 2012 and 2014, a trophy still eludes its League division. SK, however, is no stranger to lifting trophies in the tactical shooter space.

After competing with a European roster in CS:GO for a number of years, SK went and picked up the legendary Brazilian roster playing for Luminosity in the summer of 2016. The move immediately paid off with a Major trophy at ESL One Cologne just a few months later, and the roster core of legends FalleN, fer, and coldzera continued to collect trophies through the end of 2017. The players would eventually leave to resurrect the MIBR brand in the summer of 2018, signaling SK’s exit from Counter-Strike.

As for the direction SK wants to take in VALORANT, there are a number of paths the organization could go down. With so much history in Europe and Brazil, they could look at Challengers rosters in either region and consider an Ascension run. There’s still a plethora of North American Challengers talent available as well, or SK could jump into the Game Changers scene, with some early speculation that either G2 Gozen or the Version1 roster could become available if the reported G2-V1 merger goes through.