Disguised Toast revealed the DSG team for VALORANT Game Changers, and people aren't happy about the roster.

Disguised Roster Reveal for VALORANT Game Changers

Last March 27th, Disguised revealed the players that will be competing in VALORANT Game Changers Open Qualifiers, and is composed of Jodi “QuarterJade” Lee, Kyedae “Kyedae” Shymko, Sydney “Sydeon” Parker, Tenzin “TrulyTenzin” Dolkar, with Lydia “tupperware” Wilson as the in-game leader.

The team being made up of mostly content creators and streamers, the reaction that this elicited from some members of the VALORANT community was negative, especially given the fact that Jeremy “Disguised Toast” Wang initially looked for Game Changers players to be part of the roster.

Game Changers player jellyfish quoted the roster reveal tweet with a thread, garnering almost 2 million views in under 12 hours. She said “as someone who competes in gamechangers primarily and cares about the growth of the scene and its players, it feels disrespectful that dsg originally asks for actual players to build a roster for gamechangers and then builds a team w 4 very popular streamers”

“this opportunity is exciting for tupperware, i love and respect her as a person and player! but this team does not benefit the other 4 girls as they (seemingly) have stated this is a one off experience for them. if it was labeled from the start as a for-fun team, no one would have an issue with it, but because he openly asked for recommendations in the first tweet he put out, it seemed like he wanted to put a serious roster together,” jellyfish continued. “the argument that this team will bring any sort of exposure to the scene that can actually benefit us doesn't make sense to me because it's not highlighting the talented competitors. do not misconstrue this as me saying any of the 4 are not good players. that's irrelevant, and i think they are all good at the game. but they do not compete and seemingly do not intend to. so it feels like a bit of a slap in the face to extend this insane opportunity to the entire scene just to rip it away and hand it to content creators who will not really gain anything long term.”

jellyfish closed off with a statement saying she does not intend to be disrespectful towards the DSG Game Changers roster, and reiterated that she doesn't simply want to see Game Changers be turned into content, especially since “we already have trouble being taken seriously.”

“perhaps a majority of this discourse can be boiled down to people who care about competing seriously or people who play for fun at the end of the day. i compete because i enjoy it, and it's fun because it's hard. it's ok to play for fun, but i think i'm allowed to be frustrated when something i take seriously isn't taken seriously by others. i hope that makes sense,” jellyfish said.

Disguised Toast responds to backlash

Disguised Toast responded to jellyfish with a thread of his own, laying out the sequence of happenings and how the “content creator team” was formed.

“A month ago I asked who the best unsigned GC player was – I received a lot of great recommendation but ultimately felt like there was not enough time to put together a team responsibly in just under a month,” Disguised Toast began. “The structure would just not be in place to support a new team.”

He then revealed Discord screenshots where he met with player agents and his own general manager while looking for available Game Changers players. “It was still something I was taking seriously,” he said. To jellyfish's statement about DSG being filled with streamers, Disguised Toast responded “I assure all the girls on the team are taking this event very seriously and they all meet the criteria set out by Riot to participate. You do not get to gatekeep them from this event just because they are streamers.”

“Respectfully – no player is owed anything in the competitive space. Everyone is grinding. Everyone is sacrificing their own time to make it. You don't deserve an org more than the next person,” he continued. He then talked about how Game Changers is an underserved market and “other orgs and even Riot themselves haven't fully realized yet.” Disguised Toast also hopes that DSG Game Changers brings more attention to the under-appreciated league that he believes has great potential, but this wasn't his only goal. “I didn't want to sign a team solely based off exposure because I GUARANTEE you – people will get even more [mad] at me for that.”