Welcome back, Agents.

Episode of the essential weekly VALORANT newsletter, Spike Drop, is now live. If you subscribe, you can get each newsletter sent straight to your inbox so that you don’t miss it!

This week we unfortunately say goodbye to one of the best VALORANT sites, and do a quick preview of yet another Sentinels offseason event.

Run It Back to close down

This past Wednesday, RIB.GG announced that both the website and all of its products will be shutting down beginning December 1.

Sadly this is not a completely unexpected development, but one that’s been on the horizon for a while. Back in May, the site announced it was looking to be acquired, and in Wednesday’s announcement they said that they were not “able to develop a strategic relationship with the game maker [Riot Games].”

The loss will be immediately affected by anyone who used their data: coaches, analysts, casters, scouts, and even media members like myself. On the VALORANT competitive subreddit, RIB was used to automatically generate post-match threads.

As a journalist and writer, I’m especially sad to see their coverage go away, as they provided extensive coverage of smaller events that other outlets just don’t do. As someone who’s been contributing to Dust2.us over in the Counter-Strike scene, I know how valuable that smaller scale coverage is to the scene, and how devastating it is when it’s taken away. Some exceptional people in the VAL media space also came RIB, including Brandon “Mothman” Moore and Naim “EnKay” Rosinski, among others.

🙏 For the sake of the scene, I do hope something comes along to fill the gap. Without readily available access to this kind of data, all those coaches, analysts, casters, scouts, and media members are going to have a much tougher time doing their jobs, which could lead to lower quality players, content, and VALORANT.

SEN City Classic preview

Sentinels, NRG, Evil Geniuses, and Cloud9 are all competing in the SEN City Classic starting today! The first match is at 3pm CT, with Sentinels taking on Cloud9. All four teams are competing with their official (or unofficial according to EG) rosters for the VCT 2025 season.

🔴 Both bang and N4RRATE will play against actual VCT Americas rosters for the first time since joining Sentinels. Both have big shoes to fill, with bang taking over the controller duties for TenZ, while N4RRATE fills in for former world champion Sacy. N4RRATE is coming off a breakout year in EMEA, and I really hope to see either him or Zekken get silly with the Neon.

⚡All the offseason drama is behind NRG now, so it’s time to lock in. Unlike in previous seasons, NRG isn’t coming into the year as a heavy favorite, as they’re bringing in two players and a coach from Challengers. This year will be dependent on how well bonkar and FNS work together, and if Ethan can get back to being that extremely valuable flex player that was crucial to EG’s 2023 campaign.

😈 Speaking of EG, we finally get to see yay go head-to-head with the best teams in North America. EG has the chance to tell an even more captivating story in 2025 than they did in 2023. Instead of the out-of-nowhere superstar in Demon1, they have the former star coming back after the fall from grace. And I think I speak for my fellow Pottheads when I say there’s no one better for him to play under than potter.

☁️ Can Oxy take another step up in year two? Can Xeppaa be the star he was brought in to be? Was I right when I said that v1c was going to be a top tier player? Cloud9 has to answer all these questions this year if they want to avoid a third straight year of just narrowly missing out on Champions.

I’ll have a full preview of VCT Americas 2025 up closer to the start of the season. This will include predictions for who reaches Masters, who reaches playoffs at the end of stage two, who my MVP candidates will be, and who could make roster moves first.