Another series of North American VCT Game Changers concluded Sunday evening, and though the final winners were likely exactly who most VALORANT fans’ predicted, the road to get there was bumpier than ever.
Version1 took the Series II win after being the most consistent team in the VALORANT tournament by far. Through the double-elimination final bracket, the squad didn’t drop a single map. And, even more impressively, their victory extends veteran players Alexis “alexis” Guarrasi and Melanie “MeL” Capone’s illustrious winning streak in North America to seven titles.
In the final match, V1 demolished Complexity with a 3-0 scoreline.
Alongside MeL’s fantastic in-game leadership that has kept her on the very top for so long and alexis’ stunning Initiator play, duelist Ava “florescent” Eugene was the other standout player of the team during the final match.
Florescent continued to show she is one of the best duelists in all Game Changers. Though she is a very young player, fans and organizations alike have had their eyes on her since before she was old enough to officially join the league. In Sunday’s final, she had an average combat score of over 300 across the three maps it took for V1 to take the title.
V1’s run to the top was flawless this time, but the teams alongside them were caught in battles that saw favorites eliminated early and new stars rising to the surface.
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But, this type of frenzied competition is actually highly beneficial for Game Changers, which seeks to highlight players of marginalized genders in order to integrate them into the professional VALORANT scene.
“The more teams we have, the more chance we have of integrating into the main VCT scene one day,” MeL said, in her post-match interview.
Both alexis and MeL come from the old superstar Cloud9 White roster, a team favored to win the Game Changers Championship in 2022 that ended up falling as EMEA’s G2 Gozen won the biggest international event yet. But C9 were so dominant in NA during early 2022 that some of their matches looked, frankly, way too easy. Now, everything is changing.
MeL said her new team, V1, prepared for different teams than they actually ended up facing in this month’s tournament. Game Changers giants like XSET and Shopify Rebellion were knocked out early, leaving surprises like Disguised GC and Complexity in the mix.
The change of the guard in teams and players at the top of Game Changers creates a healthy ecosystem, MeL said. She also gave a shoutout to her old teammate Jazzy “Jazzyk1ns” Manankil, once the youngest player of Cloud9 White, who has turned into an in-game leader herself on the Complexity roster.
“Ultimately, our goal is co-ed,” MeL added. V1 entered a co-ed tournament that will begin in the next few weeks. MeL has always been insistent her work doesn’t stop with Game Changers and continues to push for integration of all genders into the VALORANT scene.
