When League of Legends fans imagined Curse Gaming breaking the Curse curse, they didn’t imagine it happening like this.
Legendary StarCraft team and community Team Liquid has merged the entire Curse Gaming organization into its brand—and that means the team forever doomed to fourth place finishes will don new colors heading into the start of the League Championship Series next month.
The new Liquid League of Legends team placed fourth in each of the last two seasons of the LCS, but are poised to break that trend after the blockbuster offseason addition of Chae “Piglet” Gwang-jin, who will bolster a bottom lane featuring the top support player in America, Alex “Xpecial” Chu. Christian “IWillDominate” Rivera and Diego “Quas” Ruiz continue to man the jungle and top lane, while rising Korean mid laner Kim “Fenix” Jae-hun takes mid lane.
Also heading to Liquid are Curse Gaming’s other players and squads, including Smash stars Juan “Hungrybox” Manuel Debiedma and Kashan “Chillin” Khan, Street Fighter player Du “NuckleDu” Dang, and its challenger League of Legends team.
The move places Curse Gaming owner Steve “LiQuID122” Arhancet as a co-owner in the new Team Liquid alongside Victor “Nazgul” Goossens.
Team Liquid, first and foremost a StarCraft community and team, has grown a massive following in Dota 2 and Hearthstone in part due to their ability to create in-depth written esports content. Curse Gaming developed a successful brand in League of Legends and houses a solid video production team.
“Our two organizations didn’t just complement each other with our different strengths,” Goossens wrote in a lengthy statement, “we could combine to become more than the sum of our parts. Together we could become more complete, stronger organization.”
In the past, Team Liquid has struggled to sign talent against organizations like Cloud9 and Evil Geniuses. Goossens believes the merger should aid in those endeavours, most notably in putting together a new Liquid Dota team.
The organization was certainly prepared for the move—a new League of Legends Liquid website launched with the announcement. It features content from writers like former Team Liquid StarCraft 2 penman Fionn, who was recently suspended from a LoL Esports gig due to comments made on Twitter.
Image via Team Liquid
