Akrew announce temporary leave from competitive Valorant
After being informed by Riot Games that they didn't make it to the next step of the Riot Valorant partnership program, Akrew decided to take a step back and leave the competitive Valorant scene, even if just temporarily.
Akrew is one of the biggest tier two organizations in North America when it comes to Valorant, and they always filled a competitive team, that was very close to reaching the VCT North America Stage 2 Challengers.
However, with a weak tier two scene in North America, and not being able to enter the Riot partnership program is not a surprise that Akrew decided to make this decision.
If you arent on the Riot partnership program, you basically have no worthy tournaments to play for, especially in North America.
While EMEA organizations have the VRL's, the North American tier two scene is sustained by the
Nerd Street weekly tournaments, on the Knights monthly gauntlet.
Despite being noble attempts to keep the tier two alive, and give young up-and-coming players a chance to show their talent, the prize pool is low and certainly doesn't justify investing in the scene for an organization such as Akrew and many others alike.
We all knew this was going to happen. With a weak tier two scene with tournaments having low prize pools, it was a matter of time until organizations that didn't make the cut for the Riot Games partnership program to start leaving the scene.
Hopefully, Riot Games can find a way to develop the tier two scene in North America incentivizing the organizations to remain in the Valorant competitive scene.
Otherwise, this can be very bad for the Valorant ecosystem.