- Acend loses the chance to reach VCT 2022 Stage 1 Masters
- The team suffers a series of costly defeats
- The reason for the benching was disagreements on where to proceed after the defeats
After a series of setbacks, Acend decided to implement some roster changes by benching in-game leader Santeri “BONECOLD” Sassi.
Acend Moves Leader to Inactive Roster
With large competitions having equally large stakes, many organizations are sometimes forced to make tough choices to remain relevant. One such competition is the ongoing Valorant Champions Tour, and it has already had its fair share of controversial roster changes, most recently in the face of T1 removing Johann “seven” Hernandez from its active roster.
Such changes don’t end with T1, because Acend has become yet another organization to remove or transfer a prominent player due to poor performance. The organization announced recently it has benched in-game leader Santeri “BONECOLD” Sassi. The Finnish player has been part of Acend’s Valorant team since its inception under the name Don’t Even Ask dating back to January 2021. An announcement on Twitter read the player has been moved to the organization’s inactive roster, however, BONECOLD is free to explore new opportunities.
This transfer marks the second change for Acend after starting 2022 VALORANT Champions Tour Challengers 1 with a 2-3 record in the Europe, Middle East, and Africa region. However, this performance was not enough to qualify for the playoffs. Their best match so far was a 2-0 in Challengers 1 against SuperMassive Blaze.
The team later suffered tough losses to Fnatic and Guild Esports, and then they faced a win-and-in scenario against BBL Esports. However, for that final match, Acend announced that star player Aleksander “zeek” Zygmunt wouldn’t be able to attend due to mental health issues. The team got an emergency substitute of Semyon “purp0” Borchev but struggled and were upset by BBL 2-1.
BONCOLD and Acend’s Future
The team’s hopes for Masters are now gone, but Acend needs to make changes. What they come up with is switching to a new in-game leader. According to Acend manager Mark “Krimson” Senior, the reason for BONECOLD’s benching is that the two parties had disagreements on what to do in-game for parts of 2021 and 2022.
“I think it's really important to improve transparency in esports in general,” wrote Krimson in a Twitter thread explaining the situation. “For the team as a whole we felt that over time the culture has changed within,” he wrote. ”The way in which the core of our team see the game and how they want to play it has moved away from the way Bonecold sees it.” Despite the disagreements BONECOLD had with the team, Krimson still said that he is a great player and that no bad blood between him and the other members.
