North American esports organisations Moist Esports and Shopify Rebellion have joined forces to field a joint team for VALORANT Challengers North America.
The two organisations have co-created a team called MxS, with its own branding and social media. The organisations will also work together on further developments.
MxS was officially announced via social media with a short release and a video detailing the new move. In the video, Ludwig Ahgren, Co-Owner of Moist Esports noted that one of the reasons for the move was that players from Moist Moguls, the VALORANT roster of Moist Esports, and players from Shopify Rebellion, saw success as a mixed roster called Lobster Fishers.
Instead of forcing players to choose which organisation they want to play for, Shopify and Moist Esports decided to co-create a new organisation that will include said players, and named it MxS. The team, according to Ahgren, is now simply a joint venture between the two organisations, with Shopify’s financial aid helping Ahgren’s plans for the roster.
As he put it, the end goal is to win NA Challengers ascend to the VCT Americas, and then be a dominating team there. Interestingly, Ahgren and MxS in general aim to challenge Riot Games’ VCT promotion system which allows promoted teams to stay in the top-tier league for two seasons. In his opinion, the current system is not good, and being a dominating team in VCT Americas could “force” Riot Games to reconsider their approach, leveraging the potential popularity and success of MxS to put pressure on Riot.
Ahgren explained: “Goals are to win Ascension, become a tier one team, win so hard in tier one that they can not kick us down, and then create the biggest and baddest team in North America.”
The news was announced just moments after Shopify Rebellion announced a move into the LCS by acquiring TSM’s slot in the North American League of Legends league. Besides League of Legends and VALORANT, Rebellion operates teams in Dota 2, Halo, Rocket League, and StarCraft.
Moist Esports, on the other hand, has teams in Super Smash Bros, Apex Legends, and Rocket League.
