Mitch Semago, a former CS:GO pro, has signed a contract to play VALORANT for Cloud9, the North American organization announced today.
The 23-year-old has become C9’s third VALORANT player alongside Tyson “TenZ” Ngo and Skyler “Relyks” Weaver, two more ex-CS:GO pros. Mitch has acted as a stand-in for C9 in several tournaments and most recently helped them finish as the runners-up at the Pulse Invitational last week.
“I’ve been playing Counter-Strike for the past 15 years and I played professionally for the past five years,” Mitch said. He switched to VALORANT because he got tired of CS and wanted a new start in Riot Games’ FPS.
Mitch didn’t announce his retirement from CS:GO until today, but he’s been playing in VALORANT tournaments since April. He started playing CS:GO in 2015 and represented several organizations, such as eUnited, Splyce, and Dignitas. He was most recently tied to Bad News Bears, an orgless team.
Bad News Bears disbanded in May when Jonathan “Jonji” Carey left to play for Chaos and Michael “dapr” Gulino switched to VALORANT. He was later picked up by Sentinels.
Mitch is the latest player to retire from CS:GO to pursue a career in VALORANT. Most of these players were competing without the financial backing of an organization but have found a new home in VALORANT.
C9 still needs to sign two more players for its VALORANT team. The North Americans have been playing with TenZ, Relyks, Mitch, Daniel “vice” Kim, and Josh “shinobi” Abastado in recent tournaments. Vice and shinobi have played in as many tournaments as mitch, so they might be the next players to sign a professional contract with C9.
