After Riot Games officially announced a series of updates regarding the Worlds 2021 tournament, the creator of League of Legends also confirmed that the VCS region would continue to be absent from this year’s top global competition.
This news also means that the 0.01% hope for Vietnamese LoL has officially been extinguished. It’s quite understandable if the fans are sad by 1 point, the players feel it 10 times more, because not at every stage of their careers do they get the chance to compete in an international-level tournament like this.
On his personal Twitter, Levi – the captain of GAM Esports shared a post expressing his disappointment upon receiving the news that VCS would not be participating in Worlds 2021:
More than anyone else, Levi feels the deepest sorrow for VCS’s missed opportunity at Worlds. Including Worlds 2020 and MSI 2021, GAM Esports has now missed three consecutive world tournaments, even when they qualified. In fact, just this past summer, Vietnamese LoL teams didn’t get to play a single match, as the VCS Summer 2021 was indefinitely postponed, and there is still no word on when they will “return,” as announced by the organizers.
Previously, there were rumors that VCS and Riot would select the top 2 representatives from VCS Spring 2021 to participate in Worlds since VCS Summer 2021 could not take place. However, it is easy to recognize that with the current complicated pandemic situation, it would be very difficult for Vietnamese teams to travel to Iceland to compete. The issue lies in the travel itself, not in choosing representatives.
Even though VCS’s absence from Worlds 2021 was anticipated, it seems that Levi and many other players still held onto a flicker of hope, only to sink deeper into disappointment when the official news was released.
VCS has been absent from the international stage for the past two years, and this will indeed be a significant setback for the competitive level of this tournament. However, our top priority remains to combat the COVID-19 pandemic, and VCS promises to return stronger to the international arena once the pandemic is under control.