The streak is over: After going winless in their first 13 match across the entire VCT Pacific 2023 season and the 2024 Kickoff, Japanese team DetonatioN FocusMe has finally won a match, even doing so against a top three team from Kickoff.
In their VCT Pacific stage one opening group stage match versus T1, the players on DFM finally achieved long-awaited victory, claiming the series in three maps with wins on Ascent and Sunset. Getting this victory was not easy though, as it came down to a 1v1 in the final round on Sunset, though An “Medusa” Min-cheol was able to use the active Viper’s Pit to his advantage to win the post-plant duel versus Ha “Sayaplayer” Jung-woo.
For both the players and fans, emotions poured out after the victory. The VCT Pacific broadcast showed both the team’s Raze star Ibuki “Meiy” Seki and fans in attendance in tears. On stream, long-time teammate of several of the DFM players and now full-time streamer Hiroto “rion” Tateno was crying before the series even ended after DFM won on Ascent, and let out a massive roar after the team finally won the series.
Rion streams for Crazy Raccoon, a popular Japanese esports organization that partnered with DFM prior to the start of the 2024 season. Most of the current DFM roster consists of players that played for Crazy Raccoon last year.
While the DFM fans have been waiting for a win in VCT Pacific since the start of 2023, the wait has been even longer for any series victory. The last time DetonatioN FocusMe won an official best-of-three series, according to Liquipedia, was at First Strike Japan in December 2020, almost three and a half years ago. As noted by casters Achilios and chobra, the players were happy just to win rounds and show improvement at Kickoff last month, but the feeling of victory now has to feel like a huge weight has been lifted off their shoulders.
