As we know, at the VCS Summer 2024 tournament, all VCS teams will need to make new additions following the major match-fixing scandal that has led many players to receive bans. Even top-tier teams like GAM Esports and Team Whales have names that are “tainted” or unable to compete. For the reigning VCS champions, although there have been some replacements during the recent playoffs, they still need to strengthen their roster with quality names. The most notable name for GAM right now is probably “Neo” Toan Tran – a player who comes from the LCS.
In fact, Neo is not a stranger to VCS audiences. He participated in several “grassroots” tournaments in Vietnam before going abroad for studies. Although he has gone through many teams in the LCS region, Neo has only been professionally competing for about 3 years, from 2021 to now in the Dignitas jersey before moving through several teams like Team SoloMid, Mirage and finally returning to Vietnam in the jersey of GAM.
However, Neo’s case has raised many questions. While he is indeed a Vietnamese (not a Vietnamese-American), his information on the LoL fandom site is displayed under the VN region. Meanwhile, similar to Neo, who has spent many years competing abroad, SofM is displayed under the CN (China) region after he became a domestic player a few years ago. This conflicting information has led many viewers to question the domestic-foreign player rules of League of Legends in Vietnam and the international professional gaming scene in general.
However, according to an explanation from Izumin – COO of GAM (the team that just signed Neo), he stated: “The distinction between domestic and foreign players in the VCS is based on lawful permanent residency. That is, it doesn’t matter where Neo, SofM, or anyone else has played in all the regions of the League of Legends world. As long as these players have Vietnamese identification documents (passport, CCCD), they are considered domestic players of the VCS because they are Vietnamese citizens.”
The explanation from the involved parties may indeed put an end to the debate. Furthermore, Neo is fundamentally not a “foreign-born Vietnamese” player like some past cases of Hai (Cloud9) or AnDa (FlyQuest). Therefore, Neo’s joining GAM is just like any other normal transaction that has occurred in the VCS before and does not affect the concept of domestic and foreign players in Vietnamese League of Legends.