It has been over two years since the release of Riot Games’ free-to-play first-person hero shooter Valorant. While the publisher has been steadily introducing new agents, maps, and better in-game settings, the esports side of things has also grown significantly. After Valorant Champions 2022, Riot announced the 30 partnered teams who shall be participating in three different circuits in the coming season. With Valorant esports thriving, it is only natural for fans to think that their favorite pros are making bank. However, Cloud9’s latest signing, star player Jaccob “yay” Whiteaker has debunked this case.
C9 yay talks about how much Valorant players make
In a recent Twitch stream, Cloud9 yay talked about the misconceptions about the money made by Valorant pros and also spoke about how buyouts work in esports. When a viewer on his stream suggested that he was rich, yay said, “I’m not that rich. There’s this misconception. People think Valorant players are f**** rich. Some of them are. Some of them with the big streams, those guys are f*** rich. But for like the most part, I’ve seen a lot of people say, ‘Whatever happens now, the OpTic guys are set for life.’ I am not set for life. If I’m gonna be honest with you, I don’t think anybody is set for life.”
Yay then acknowledged that League of Legends has rich players. He then talked about his buyout. “Yeah, I definitely got bought out for a large amount but that money does not go to me, chat. [In] most buyouts you don’t get a percentage,” he assured.
Contrastingly, in a , former League of Legends pro player William “scarra” Li and caster Sam “Kobe” Hartman-Kenzler talked about how teams were willing to offer big, fat cheques to Lee “Faker” Sang-hyeok to get him on their teams. Streamer Yvonne Ng brought up the topic of multiple teams trying to get Faker on the team by offering him a blank cheque. Following this, Kobe said, “There were some rumors about, I forget if it was a year or two years ago, TSM [Team SoloMid] had offered a giant, giant sum. I don’t know if those were true or not.” Immediately scarra said they were true but was not sure if it was TSM and hinted that it could have been Team Liquid.
Interestingly, League of Legends players are not some of the highest-earning esports players. The list is heavily dominated by Dota 2 pros and a handful of Counter-Strike: Global Offensive players. With Valorant being so new to the esports ecosystem, it would take a considerable amount of time for the game’s ecosystem to deal in such huge sums of money and prize pools.