How TenZ became the biggest star in VALORANT

Teng won the race. Sometimes esports take a while to get off the ground, but not VALIANT. Riot Games' second preeminent esports title is a direct competitor to CS: GO and was released when North America's CS scene was stagnant and the early days of the pandemic created plenty of free time. VALORANT's beta was a fair trial for prospective pros. Orgs were already picking up teams well ahead of the game's full release in June 2020, so ranked became a true battleground.

"The beta period of VALORANT was enticing from the standpoint of getting seen by orgs," Teng said. "If you could rank high on the leaderboard or get VALORANT rank first, a lot of orgs would look at you. That's why so many people tried so hard and ground during that time."

Teng returned to pro play with Cloud9 VALORANT, which eventually became C9 Blue by creating the org's dominant women's team C9 White. Even with TenZ's skill, Cloud9 Blue struggled to break into the top five teams in North America.

C9 Blue failed to qualify for First Strike North America, and TenZ, whose content was already increasing, decided to retire to focus on content creation. For the second time in as many years, his pro play gave way to streaming.

It begged the question of whether his pro career would ever truly take off. With his Twitch channel averaging 10,000+ viewers and C9 Blue not finding the best results, retiring -- at least for a few months -- made sense. Plus, there are worse things than commanding an audience of over 10,000 viewers for 150 streaming hours in January, according to TwitchTracker.

"For me, I will prioritize playing pro over streaming if I'm a pro player," Teng said. "I do enjoy streaming. I enjoy interacting with the fans, my community. They're amazing. And for us pro players, we wouldn't have the same desire to win if there weren't many fans supporting us. That's what keeps us going, and I appreciate all our fans."

Opportunity calls, again.

Although Teng was happy to keep streaming, in esports, things can change quickly. That's what happened for Sentinels, by any metric, one of the best teams in North America heading into Stage 1 Masters. Just days before the biggest tournament VALORANT esports had seen up to that point, their star player Jay "Sinatra" Won was suspended as an investigation began into allegations of sexual assault by the former Overwatch League MVP. Sentinels needed a replacement ASAP, and C9 was happy to loan out their streamer for a stint with Sentinels.

"From the day when I stepped down, I wasn't expecting much," Teng said. "I was expecting to stay on the sidelines until whenever the time was right for me to come back to pro play. Then I got the message from Shahzeb' ShahZam' Khan on Twitter DM, and that started everything."

He fit in nicely. Sentinels went on to win that tournament, dropping just one map. It's hard to incorporate a new player into a team, especially one that hadn't gone through any roster changes up until that point after the initial roster was constructed. Sentinels didn't have any trouble.