The VALORANT Challengers League for the CIS region, known as Challengers CIS: Milestone, will not resume in the 2023 VCT season after “thoughtful consideration” from the EMEA Challengers League officials, Riot Games announced today.
Milestone, back when it operated as one of several EMEA regional leagues in 2022, was canceled in March of this past year in the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. At the time, the league was made up of eight teams that consisted of a majority of Russian players.
After only two weeks of competition, matches were postponed at the start of March before the entire league itself was canceled for the majority of the year. The timing of the invasion also caused delays at the top tier of EMEA VALORANT competition, postponing EMEA Challengers One group stage matches and forcing the former Gambit roster to compete as Masters 3 Champions (M3C) for the rest of the year.
Challengers CIS would have allowed for players from Russia, Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan to compete in the league, and while it must be disappointing for them not to have their own league to compete in, Riot has allowed those players to continue to compete “as EMEA residents in VCT and Challengers.”
This means that these players could in theory compete for any team in any EMEA Challengers region. Teams only need to have a minimum of three players from a league’s specific territory and can supplement their rosters with any players from the EMEA resident pool. The EMEA rulebook now no longer lists the CIS league or territories in its glossary, but the countries that originally made up the CIS territory are mentioned in the EMEA competitive region list.
