The Commonwealth of Independent States region has its first professional Valorant team, as forZe acquired the EveryBodyDance roster on Monday to form their squad for the new game.
Joining forZe are Belarus' Nikita "Coffee" Antsypirovich, Dima "SmartSeven" Smartselov and Nikolay "zed" Lapko; Russia's Nikolay "kolyaN" Varaksin; Ukraine's Stefan "1mpala" Ailazyan; and Russian coach Vladimir "PNUKH" Chervov.
forZe said in a statement, "It is worth noting that, despite the fact that the official release of (Valorant) is planned only at the beginning of summer, many tournaments and qualifications are already taking place on it. And we certainly believe that this bold step will be able to meet our expectations and we will all together observe the formation of a new discipline and the development of our composition."
forZe CEO Sergey "MegioN" Ignatko said, according to egamersworld.com, "We always look forward and play ahead of the curve. Valorant is the most promising esports discipline of all recent projects. Millions of active players, as well as a huge interest in Valorant at the beta stage, confirm that Riot Games knows what they are doing.
"We carefully watched the various stacks formed at the beta stage, and found the composition with which we will develop in the new discipline."
Playing under the EveryBodyDance banner, the newly acquired forZe squad recently won three CIS Valorant events: the Moscow Five Invitational, Evelone Streamers Invitational and Cyber Cage Cup.
They also won the 64-team qualifying event for the Epulze Valorant Prodigies on May 15, securing a spot in the main draw of the $3,000 event that began play with Group A and Group B on May 23 and May 24, respectively. forZe will begin action in Group C on June 6, with the playoffs set for June 13-14.
forZe's Epulze Valorant Prodigies group will include European esports stalwart Ninjas in Pyjamas as well as PartyParrots and StartedFromCS.
--Field Level Media