Cloud9 went to Worlds billed as part of the best three-team lineup LCS has ever sent to Worlds, then promptly lost a best of five to Brazil's FURIA in the play-ins and finished 19th. Three LFN League shows picked through the wreckage this week, and the verdict from inside the Cloud9 camp is brutal: this roster will not and should not play together again, because all five players share the same flaw. One bad game and the whole team collapses.
Shut Up and Scale asked the harder question: is this the most humiliating result in North American history? Not quite. The 0-10 second week at Worlds 2015 still owns that title. Meanwhile, FlyQuest CEO Brian Anderson joined The Four Horsemen to explain why the LCS's best viewership since 2022 says more about the League of Legends calendar than it does about North America.
⚔️ LEAGUE OF LEGENDS
Cloud9's play-in exit dominated the week, with three shows on the autopsy. With the main event underway, the conversation has already moved on to who can actually win it.
→ Power Spike: Yamato from Cloud9's own coaching staff says this roster will not and should not play together again, because all five players share the same flaw of collapsing the moment one of them has a bad game. Watch →
→ Summoning Insight: T1 are not winning Worlds this year, because Gumayusi, the AD carry who carried their playoff runs, now plays for Hanwha Life, a team that would knock them out if the two meet. Plus Thorin, YamatoCannon and Keire each pick a different team to win it all. Watch →
→ Shut Up and Scale: Thorin, Nymaera and Peter Dun debate whether Cloud9 losing a best of five to FURIA is North America's most humiliating Worlds moment, and the answer is still the 0-10 second week at Worlds 2015, when all three NA teams collapsed with qualification in reach. Watch →
→ Let's Cover Korea: Riot's new Worlds anthem Know My Name pulled six million views in a day, but it fails the only test that matters for a League of Legends anthem: can anyone sing it in the car? Plus KT Rolster locking down BDD and Perfect. Watch →
💣 COUNTER-STRIKE
FURIA finally lifted a trophy at the Thunderpick World Championship, and Falcons are back under the microscope after throwing away the semi-final.
→ Counter-Points: FURIA finally won a trophy at the Thunderpick World Championship, but a grand final that close against BetBoom means nothing has really changed about where they rank. Watch →
→ Hot Take Point Made CS: Thorin, Mauisnake and Pimp clash over how to fix Falcons: Pimp says sell the young rifler the roster was rebuilt around and give NiKo his star positions back, while Mauisnake calls that a regression and wants NiKo as IGL. Watch →
🎯 VALORANT
→ The Vodfathers: TMV, ShyoWager and Sideshow argue over whether this was the weakest Valorant Champions ever: TMV says no team ever reached its best level, while Sideshow says teams like 100 Thieves and Vitality only looked less clean because they deliberately countered the Sage and Chamber meta (the dominant agent picks), which was the right call. Watch →
🐉 DOTA 2
Dota 2 is back above a million concurrent players, though not all of them are people, and OG's new roster is already being written off by its former coach.
→ Not For Broadcast: Dota 2 is back above a million concurrent players, but a large slice of that number is bot accounts farming custom games rather than real people returning to the game. Plus Cap and SVG disagree about how much a modern mid laner matters. Watch →
→ All Chat: Former OG coach Misha wrote off the team's new roster as already dead, and the crew thinks it is pure rage bait that worked. Plus NatTea on how she went from almost quitting esports to hosting a grand final at The International, Dota's world championship. Watch →
🛡️ RAINBOW SIX SIEGE
One of Siege's founding organizations is closing its doors, while the game's biggest streamer may be about to buy his way into the North America League.
→ Down But Not Out: Evil Geniuses, one of the first major organizations to back Rainbow Six Siege and a 2018 world finalist, is shutting down entirely, and almost every other org from that era is already gone. Watch →
→ Down But Not Out: Streamer Jynxzi is working toward buying a North America League slot for a tier two (second division) roster of his friends, and it would be the best thing to happen to the league's viewership in years. Watch →
🎬 TV & FILM
→ Four Play: Tim Curry said on the record that his favorite film to work on was not Rocky Horror or Clue but Muppet Treasure Island, and the case for why is stronger than it sounds. Watch →
🏇 THE FOUR HORSEMEN
→ The Four Horsemen: The LCS hit its highest viewership since 2022 mostly because it was the last league still playing, leaving every co-streamer in the world with nothing else to broadcast. Plus FlyQuest CEO Brian Anderson on the state of the North American esports business. Watch →
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Esports delenda est.
MonteCristo