The former Luminosity Gaming lineup has been signed by Shopify Rebellion on June 27 ahead of the Valorant Champions Tour North American Last Chance Qualifier.
The organization already has a women’s team in Valorant that has done well in the Game Changers tournaments and has now branched out with this men’s squad. Shopify will compete in the upcoming VCT LCQ tournament set to begin in August as the squad lost out in the Stage Challengers playoffs a few weeks ago.
Guess Who's Coming to Dinner pic.twitter.com/CmMWwCChjH
— Shopify Rebellion (@ShopifyRebels) June 27, 2022
Luminosity Gaming exited Valorant “for the foreseeable future” the organization announced on June 2. Its Valorant team was about to compete in Week 4 of Valorant Champions Tour Stage 2 Challengers and stayed under the Luminosity banner until their recent signing.
The announcement also said that the organization will look to find the team and its staff a new home to compete under.
LG’s Adam ‘mada’ Pampuch and others on his team said on Twitter that they were restricted free agents at the time of the announcement.
“Keeping our roster and staff together is incredibly important to us, and vital to the long term success of this team,” he said.
— Luminosity Gaming (@Luminosity) June 2, 2022
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Luminosity sat at 2-1 in VCT Challengers at the time of their announcement and were in prime position to qualify for playoffs with only two more matches to go in the group stage. The current squad of five has been together since January 2022.
Luminosity in Valorant
The org joined Valorant on August 15, 2020 by signing the free agent team MIXUP. Since that initial lineup, the team has gone through multiple players and roster iterations.
In terms of results, LG placed first at the Nerd Street Gamers Winter Championship, but did not made a dent in VCT competition during its time in the esport. Luminosity’s highest placement in the Riot Games circuit came in 2021 with three third-place finishes in Stage 1 Challengers 1 and 3, as well as Stage 3 Challengers 2.
The organization did not qualify for any international events in their time in Valorant.
The news of the organization leaving Valorant comes weeks after its parent company, Enthusiast Gaming, has come under scrutiny.
Enthusiast Gaming is one of the few esports companies that is publicly traded, which closed at 2.4 at the close of the market on June 2, and has seen its largest investor publicly campaign to have its CEO and parts of its board removed.
Luminosity’s announcement said that the organization does not rule out competing in Valorant again in the future and is looking forward to “Riot’s upcoming structure for 2023.” Nothing has been announced about if the organization has applied for the Riot-ran league but exiting the esport could mean that Luminosity will not be seen in the international league in 2023.