As we know, in their opening match against LOUD – the representative from CBLOL recently during the Play-In Stage of the 2023 World Championship, GAM Esports was completely defeated. Even in the second game, when they had many advantages, the yellow-black army of VCS could not capitalize on it to equalize. Mistakes from individual to team levels were evident, alongside the clearly superior performance of the players from Brazil, proving they deserved to win more than GAM.
Witnessing GAM’s performance, the VCS community naturally shares the same feeling of disappointment. This is the second consecutive time VCS, or more specifically GAM, has lost to a team from the wildcard region – which is always considered to be on par with or below the VCS region. Not to mention, unlike Movistar R7, GAM lost both games outright this time. Meanwhile, GAM is a team that underwent many personnel changes, which were considered quality during the Summer 2023 when Slayder and Palette joined. And in the match against LLL, this duo can be said to have played the worst.
Looking back at GAM’s achievements at Worlds 2023, Levi and his teammates still have a match against R7 in the losers’ bracket, so hope is not completely lost. However, on the day of GAM’s defeat, Teacher Ba also made a post on social media stating: “At this rate, there will probably only be 1 slot in the Play-in next year”. Of course, Riot is not in a hurry to retract the 2 slots for the VCS region. But clearly, VCS teams are performing much less impressively than regions that only have 1 slot like CBLOL. This undesirable scenario is also a concern for fans in the region.
Additionally, there are many opinions mentioning SofM with the hope that during this time, the “Vietnamese Jungle God” can support GAM since he is also in South Korea. However, this is unlikely to happen as SofM, if he wants to, can only communicate or encourage (in a direct messaging way) and cannot deeply intervene in GAM or Team Whales’ internal matters.
GAM will have to strive to save their fate at Worlds 2023 as well as regain the trust of their fans. This is not impossible, but it will certainly be extremely difficult, especially since R7 has also previously defeated the VCS representative at MSI 2023.