The captain of the free agent Valorant team Squirtle Squad has revealed that the squad needs to change its name for the North American Challengers League, as Nintendo owns the copyright to their name.
Squirtle Squad earned a spot in the Challengers League through the Last Chance Qualifier. The free-agent squad consists of former signed talent like Peter ‘Governor’ No and Matthew ‘WeDid’ Suchan. The free-agent team has been around with various rosters since early 2021 and has competed in multiple open events in North America.
Governor revealed on January 26 that Riot Games told the team it needed to rename itself for the league as Nintendo owns the copyright for the moniker ‘Squirtle Squad.’
Due to conflict of interest with Riot and Nintendo we gotta change our team name. Best reply will be our team name going into challengers.
— Governor (@Governor_Val) January 26, 2023
Governor took to Twitter to crowdsource a new name for the team, saying the best reply to his Tweet would be chosen and received various answers from community members.
Squirtle Squad to change team name before Valorant Challengers League
Some of the top replies to the Tweet were names tangentially related to the team’s former moniker, but that did not step on Nintendo’s copyright, like Turtle Troop, Blast-boyz or blue turtle enjoyers.
Subscribe to our newsletter for the latest updates on Esports, Gaming and more.
Others suggested innuendos or names that would make for funny tricodes that would show up on the Challengers broadcast, like Protecting Our Own.
Governor’s teammate, Anthony ‘Okeanos’ Nguyen, suggested that the team change its name to Moist eSports and tagged the organization’s owners. Moist Esports is a content creator-owned organization founded by Moist Cr1TiKal, that has also added Ludwig Ahgren as a co-owner.
Ahgren has recently suggested that he is interested in signing a Valorant team. The team formerly known as Squirtle Squad is in the market to sign for an organization and should be an enticing squad to pick up as it has a spot in the Challengers League for 2023.
The team has until February 1 to change its name as that is the date the Challengers League begins competition.