Shopify Rebellion releases Game Changers roster: ‘We fell short of our ambitions’

In a shocking move, Shopify Rebellion announced today that it has released its VALORANT Game Changers roster effective immediately, leaving the players as immediate unrestricted free agents going forward.

Shopify announced this in a video posted to Twitter on Oct. 26 featuring program development lead Dario “TLO” Wünsch. “Today we are announcing the release of our VALORANT Game Changers roster, allowing all of them to explore their options unconditionally going into 2024,” TLO said in the video.

He also recognized that fans of the organization would likely be stunned by this move, as the Game Changers roster has been their most successful team when it comes to VALORANT. 

While their male counterparts have languished in tier two without much to show for it, Shopify Rebellion GC attended the first-ever Game Changers World Championship last year, knocking their perpetual rival Cloud9 White (now Version1) out of the tournament and taking second place in the world after a G2 reverse sweep. 

They have also been one of the longest-standing cores in the North American Game Changers scene, with Erika “KP” Lytle, Kayla “flowerful” Horton, and Diana “sonder” Zhang playing together for Shopify GC since June 2021. 

However, according to TLO, the roster and organization didn’t meet their goals in 2023. “The truth is, we struggled this year,” TLO said in the video. “Not only in not meeting our goal of qualifying for Champions but also in creating the team culture that we want to build our program on. We brought in new and familiar faces along the way trying to reach goals, but we fell short of our ambitions.”

As it stands now, the futures of both the players on this roster and the organization’s involvement in the Game Changers circuit remain to be seen. According to TLO, Shopify believes the players will “find success individually,” and intend to support them in finding that.

TLO also stated that Shopify does still intend to compete in Game Changers, but it isn’t clear in which direction the organization will move next.