A significant shift occurred in the NA VALORANT landscape just hours before Team Envy clinched the final North American spot at VCT Masters Three Berlin last week. Anthony "vanity" Malaspina, a veteran of NA CS:GO, has joined Cloud9's Blue roster as an in-game commander.

As Version1 watched the player who led the club to Reykjavik change his flag and reconcile with his former Chaos E.C. colleagues, the org also had to sit and watch Jaccob "yay" Whiteaker, a player for whom it had planned to make an offer, succeed in his first season with a different team. Despite missing out on yay, V1 COO Brett Diamond stated the team is willing to spend money to recruit a high-caliber talent.

V1's post-Reykjavik ambition was to keep building the lineup that had been so successful during VCT Stage Two. While vanity's choice to quit and reunite with Nathan "leaf" Orf and Erick "Xeppaa" Bach was disappointing, the organisation claimed it didn't entirely throw the team off. From the moment Chaos E.C. disbanded its CS:GO roster following vanity's acquisition by V1, Diamond indicated there was a good chance they'd all reassemble in VALORANT. They also approached C9 about bringing Xeppaa and leaf to V1, according to Diamond, but the topic never advanced beyond exploratory talks.

In terms of the V1 VALORANT roster's immediate future, coach Ian "immi" Harding announced on Twitter that Jordan "Zellsis" Montemurro will take on more leadership responsibilities after initially splitting them with vanity. Immi and V1 management, according to Diamond, already have a "short list" of people they're evaluating for the roster. He did say, though, that the company isn't "rushing to recruit a huge star," preferring to focus on fit ahead of the VCT NA Last Chance Qualifier.