Riot Games has announced the host city and venue for the 2023 VALORANT Game Changers Championship, and it disappointed the whole community. In the announcement news, Riot said the 2022 Championship continued to “fuel [Riot’s’] ambitions for the Game Changers program.” Despite that, however, the 2023 event is going to be smaller than ever and players and fans aren’t happy.
The news highlighted how the inaugural Game Changers Championship “broke multiple records” and was received with enthusiasm from the entire VALORANT community.
But it was still not enough, apparently, as Riot has now chosen a 150-seat venue for the Championship event of 2023, less than the capacity held by the LEC Studios in Berlin where the 2022 event took place.
“The thing that upsets me the most is I know Brazil could easily fill a venue with thousands of people for Game Changers,” Erika “KP” Lytle, IGL for Shopify Rebellion, told Dot Esports. KP labeled Riot’s choice of venue as “upsetting” as the 2022 Championship saw almost 250k viewers. It was the most-watched tournament for female esports.
And the interest in the tournament was not only digital: fans quickly bought the available tickets for the live event, causing the first Game Changers LAN to sell out within minutes.
But the lack of space limited fans from attending the 2022 Championship, and apparently, that will be the case again this year.
According to Shopify Rebellion’s IGL, Riot could “easily” fill more seats for the 2023 Championship and is just “choosing not to”—and she is not wrong. Leo Faria, Global Head of VALORANT Esports, said the studios, which are of a similar size around the world, are “the right choice for the tournament.” In his tweet, Faria explained that Riot is aiming at bringing women to VCT Masters and Champions, and “not trying to grow” the Game Changers Championship to the size of those tournaments. He concluded by stating that partners and sponsors of the event are also confident in the choice made.
But the seating number is not the only problem that dwells in the minds of the players of the circuit. The host country, Brazil, is also the country with the highest trans murder rate in the world, as highlighted by Presley “Slandy” Anderson, player for Misfits Black.
“It’s so disappointing and disheartening,” Slandy said. “I feel so deflated knowing not only is my personal life affected every day by legislation passed by old out-of-touch representatives but also that the travel I do for the job that I love is potentially dangerous just because of who I am.”
There is also a structural misstep lingering over the tournament. With the venue announcement, Riot also unveiled the number of teams participating in the Game Changers Championship of 2023, and with it, the tournament will keep on holding the record for the smallest number of teams participating in an international VALORANT event.
In fact, only eight teams from all over the world will be able to take part in the competition that will crown the Game Changers world champions of 2023.
Eight teams also competed in last year’s Championship and first Game Changers live event, two less than the first international VCT event of Masters 2 in Reykjavík held in 2021.
An anonymous Game Changers player said to Dot Esports that, considering this event comes “only once a year,” there should be at least ten teams participating—and they’re not the only one believing so. They continued explaining that the smaller venue creates issues not only for the fans, but also for the players and their families: “A lot of players’ families weren’t accounted for, which is really disappointing since my parents would have loved to come to the Championship, but tickets sold out so fast, it wasn’t possible.”
Overall they have found it “very disappointing” that the Riot organizers “didn’t learn from [the] last event” before planning this 2023 VALORANT tournament.
More information on the tickets for the 2023 Game Changers Championship will be shared at a later date, but contrary to the community’s wishes it’s unlikely that the venue will be changed. Dot Esports reached out to Riot for a comment on the reasoning behind the decision that led them to choose the esports arena at Riot Studios in São Paulo for the 2023 Game Changers Champions. This article will be updated with their reply.
