In the latest North American Valorant roster shuffling news, Luminosity Gaming has dropped stellar and thief, two of their original roster members.
stellar part with Luminosity Gaming
Upcomer’s George Geddes reported earlier this week that Luminosity Gaming has decided not to extend the contracts of inactive Valorant roster members Brenden “stellar” McGrath and Brady “thief” Dever. Both players will become free agents beginning August 25th, 2021.
However, as August 25th came and went, only stellar ended up leaving LG. As his organization has released him, stellar is now free to join any Valorant team without buying out their contracts. In late May, both stellar and thief were removed from active duty after LG was eliminated from VCT Stage 2 Challengers 2.
Luminosity Gaming’s moves since May
After benching stellar and thief in May, LG brought in Joseph “ban” Seungmin from Team Serenity, Will “dazzLe” Loafman from Ghost Gaming, and Tanner “TiGG” Spanu from Beastcoast as a stand-in. As of August 9th, ban has also been listed inactive.
thief and stellar’s time on the bench
Version 1 briefly acquired thief on-loan during VCT Stage 3 Challengers 1 while Jordan “Zellsis” Montemurro served his suspension. thief even managed to eliminate LG in the open qualifier, but V1 eventually bowed out of the competition as well.
stellar, on the other hand, recently competed in the Nerd Street Gamers Summer Championships with OOKERS. Though showing signs of promise, the team didn’t place any higher than 9th-16th.
stellar has officially updated his Twitter bio, introducing himself as a free agent and the former IGL of Luminosity Gaming. On the other hand, thief has not made any changes to his Twitter bio, indicating that he’s most likely still on the LG’s inactive list.
Luminosity Gaming moving forward
As of writing, the Luminosity Gaming roster is as follows:
- Diondre “YaBoiDre” Bond
- Kaleb “moose” Jayne
- Will “dazzLe” Loafman
- Alex “aproto” Protopapas
- Joseph “ban” Seungmin Oh (Inactive)
- Jared “mac” Schneider (Head coach)
Luminosity Gaming has secured enough points to compete in the VCT NA Last Chance Qualifiers on October 12-17. They are joined by Cloud 9 Blue, Gen.G Esports, Rise, FaZe Clan, XSET, Version1, two teams from the Oceania Tour, and either Team Envy or 100 Thieves.
UPDATE: thief has also now been dropped by Luminosity, according to his Twitter post below. This article has been updated to reflect that fact.
