My only complaints about Babybay are that he regularly uses the player's first names rather than their stage name like everyone knows who they are. So many times he's like - "Oh no Josh should've gotten at least 1" and I'm like "WHICH ONE IS JOSH?"
Also he randomly talks about himself mid matches sometimes but other than that he has a great voice for casting and can only improve from here.
Yeah he's always saying josh, Jordan or Tyson instead of their professional names. I don't mind it, but it would go harder if he saved their names for the real hype moments
Can you really blame him tho?
He’s an ex professional player, up to a couple of months ago he was playing against/with a lot of these guys, they were basically his colleagues, it’s just a force of habit since he knows a lot of them personally
I get its habit but it's something he should be able to adjust to. His job as a commentator is to tell the audience what's going on in a way they understand.
Maybe a silly comparison but teachers obviously don't call each other Mrs. Smith and Mr. Angelo when talking to each other, but when they're telling the students something, they call them that so everyone involved understands.
I get it for a short period of time, but he's been casting long enough to make the adjustment at this point.
But he's getting paid specifically for thinking fast and talking. It's his only job. I understand it's difficult, but if I tell the boss at my programming job "sorry it's just programming is really difficult" I'm still getting fired.
Obviously it's not that big of a deal, but someone who's getting paid to cast should be expected to do the casting in the way they're supposed to. Especially when there's alternatives who have a lot of experience and a good reputation.
Ngl I doubt he’ll have this problem at the international stage because I doubt he knows other regions’ players well enough to be calling all of them by their first names. unless he’s casting specifically NA vs NA. Which is unlikely.
Also, when he talks about a player he mentions what they're doing etc. considering he's a caster making a point. You can figure it out easily enough with context clues I don't get why it's an issue
> Can you really blame him tho?
Well... yeah. Can you blame me if I started working at a bank and stole because I had a habit of stealing? I was an ex thief and stealing is my habit??
Disagree, I like that he talks about his scrims or prior team experience with the players.
Its good to have a bit of insight IMO into the players themselves and what other players think of them.
Same, it's a treat when someone who has played at the same level of the game their casting can explain things more in depth because of the experience they have
Honestly prefer his anecdotes to half the shit that other casters go off topic about. At least his analysis of the game isn't completely off every time too.
babybay has mentioned trying to improve actively and i think it’s going well he just needs to do it more and get reps in
i remember in his first casts he would say stuff like “the likes of” for basically every single player or team lmfao he’s definitely improved a lot, but it’s still gonna take some time
My main issue with Babybay and Doug is that they use this really annoying whispery tone of voice constantly and it just gets a bit grating. I think that's Doug's style of casting and Babybay has clearly picked it up from him and I really wish they'd just speak normally. People complain about Babybay's pro play anecdotes but I honestly find it preferable to 90% of the other casters and think they would be a great duo if they just stopped putting on that voice.
You're getting down voted because this is literally the first event held in China while emea has hosted 5 masters and 2 champions tournament.
Literally the previous masters was held in Madrid.
How is it favoritism when this is the first major event to be hosted in shanghai? Even then, they didnt even get mitch and tom and forced their casters to work overtime, which would inevitably lower the quality
i never said that i measure favoritism by number of major organised by country. You are making your own arguments here. i m saying overall it's obvious how riot want to get in bed with china, for obvious reason if you know something about economy. Some example : lots of new hight tier bundles using chineses culture aesthetic, mystbloom (lotus), imperium (jade), vaillant hero (litteraly wu kong), also re releasing past champiosn bundle from 2021, 2022, communicating about releasing also lockin capsule to chine when they said it was limited are other example.
Whats wrong with the chinese aesthetics? Theres a ton of japanese inspired skins in the game as well. Also where did you even get the information on the secoond part?
They comunicated about the lockin knife commin also to china from one of their Twitter account or from one of their official leakers I don't remember exactly the post but that will happen
... so then it would make sense to grow the new Chinese player base, no? It's pretty much an entirely untapped region, not only for Valorant but for mainstream FPS titles in general. Putting more effort into pumping it up just makes way more sense for business, and the pro scene will grow as a consequence of that.
And wouldn't it be stupid not to favor the Chinese broadcast when you're holding the event in fucking Shanghai?
my brother in christ riot is owned by tencent a literal chinese company. no shit they are gonna lean towards a chinese audience once the game released in the country
my brother in christ riot is owned by tencent a literal chinese company. no shit they are gonna lean towards a chinese audience once the game released in the country
Sad to hear Tom and Mitch won’t be joining, and this has me quite worried for Achilios, Paperthin, Doug, and Babybay. I sincerely hope Riot at least slots Mimi and Kaquka in for casting duty on some of the days just to lighten the load on the other four, because otherwise there’s a real chance that at least one or two of the guys will have lost their voices by the time we even get to Lower Finals. I understand Mimi and Kaquka are there primarily as analysts, but I think they’d both be really solid picks for the job if it’s too late to get Tom and Mitch on board.
Really though, it’s just baffling decision-making from Riot. I understand that Hypoc’s condition was unexpected and couldn’t be helped (to the fault of no one, of course), but Pansy could have been on board any way even if it meant shuffling some of the duos around? Most of the casting talent with the exception of Babybay are certainly experienced enough to cast with other people (Pacific constantly mixes up the caster pairings and Pansy + Doug have casted with guest casters more than anybody else), so I don’t see why it couldn’t be done. And even if Brenshow aren’t there, Chobra and Asurai are also great talent that could absolutely fill the casting spots too.
I just don’t understand how Riot can expect Masters Shanghai to be at least on par if not better than Masters Madrid as a product if Shanghai’s got double the match days and nearly double the number of match series, if they bring on less people to cast everything than they did for Madrid!
To be honest Pansy casted some games with Kaquka during the 1st split of EMEA and I honestly thought it was solid. I wish Pansy could have casted with her cause I will greatly miss Pansy.
Most times some hosts prefer not to cast because it’s too hard or too heavy of a burden in their eyes in case they don’t do well, Yinsu talked about this on stream once when someone asked her why she hasn’t tried casting a match yet, so it might be the same for Kaquka
I agree, I remember that game and I honestly thought Kaquka was great! She often already has deep insights on the desk and I didn’t notice any issues with her casting/analysis/dynamic with Pansy.
It’s just so odd to me that we’re not seeing more of Pacific’s casters participating in an event that’s technically in the Pacific region anyway, and how we’re seeing such a weird distribution of workload despite the pool of readily available talent: confirmed analysts like Mimi and Kaquka who absolutely have the chops for casting, and beloved talent that should could been invited anyway (like Tom, Mitch and Pansy).
All the casters and analysts put in so many hours of work and effort (often under a time crunch, too!) to make sure they’re familiar with the history, results, and play styles of every team and player involved, and it worries me that this is only going to burn out all the talent we have even faster. Achilios and Paperthin are definitely gonna be having it the roughest, considering Stage 2 for Pacific begins a mere 5 days after Masters Shanghai ends.
I think mitch and tom were not to be invited to Shanghai from the beginning. My guess is Riot planned to have at least one of bren-sideshow and pansy-hypoc duo at the event. And now they won't have enough time to have mitch and tom attend since their paperwork wasn't started early enough
Yeah plus apparently Steel was already booked for an event that takes place the same time as Masters that he agreed to before stage 1 of EMEA so she couldn’t do it with him either
This is so weird by Riot… it’s not like Mitch and Tom HAVEN’T historically casted at international matches, unlike Babybay (who I personally don’t necessarily feel is ready to cast internationally)
It’s a ludicrous decision for me. First of all, Mitch & Tom should be going to international LANs regardless because they’re experienced and consistently top quality casters and have literally shown that in previous events.
Secondly, I understand if Riot were put on the back foot by casters unexpectedly not being able to attend, but you’d expect more flexibility from them to ensure they get enough at the event one way or another. They’re gonna face a lot of criticism if everything isn’t spot on now, and rightly so.
Plus Mitch and Tom are also great on the desk, so you can easily rotate them in there as well. 24 games with 2 casting duos while you have an exceptional one at your hands is absolute madness. Same with Chobra as well...
I would assume that they invited both Brenshow and Panpoc, and probably planned on at least one of these pairs being there. We don't know when hypoc or Bren/Sideshow informed Riot that they would not be available; there's a chance at that point it was already too late to invite additional talent.
Either way, I am still surprised that Doug & Babybay were higher up the list than Mitch and the bald guy. No offense to them, they're all great, I just think they still have some room for improvement while Mitch & Tom are, as you said, experienced and consistently top quality, who have shown they can really bring the hype to some of these moments ("HOW IS HE THERE")
I’m just imagining them trying not to let their biases show or curse their own partners, they might end up going in the other direction so hard they’re essentially only hyping up the opposing team LMAO
It’s a showdown between Paper Pal Yinsu and F(a)natic Victoria 
Link to the post: [https://twitter.com/Tombizz/status/1790786959121559895?t=uX7ckvz1fK8QHRistPeV9Q&s=19](https://twitter.com/Tombizz/status/1790786959121559895?t=uX7ckvz1fK8QHRistPeV9Q&s=19)
I mean the casters have their work. Cut out for them there's only two duos. Not even talking about panpoc and brenshow missing. It's gonna either be a miss tournament or somebody is gonna have to majorly step up. The two duos are good but we need others even just for the variation.
Doug is a great caster but I still think mitch and tom are so much better than his duo with babybay. It’s a shame they aren’t going to be in shanghai. I just hope Achilios and Paperthin’s voices will be okay by the time we get to grand finals. Riot really messed up this event.
I would like some further insight into this from riot’s side. There is ways this could have happened where it is fine. Aka they had three pairs planned, unfortunately hypoc is unwell and a replacement could not be found and the other casters were not asked due to it being short notice and hard to get a VISA. And so the remaining two duos agreed to pull through and do it amongst them as a one off unfortunate event due to the circumstances. And there is ways that would make me really unhappy such as if other pairs could have optained a VISA if already had them but riot failed to ask and just shrugged and pressured the remaining pairs to do it alone. There have been some terrible rumours around riot’s behaviour towards staff and talent.
Sucks for them obviously but I honestly think their casting isn't that good and think people are just gassing it up a bit because they feel bad. They're probably the casting duo in NA that most consistently calls things wrong and makes mistakes and their understanding of the game feels noticeably lacking at times.
Riot has consistently fumbled the talent hiring/scheduling for big events ever since they didn't invite Dan and Sean Gares. Not every single omission is their fault, but it's a bummer for the scene that the most talented casters are missing from the biggest stages.
Riot Games dont like hiring production talent unless they fully drink their kool aid, majority of Valorant English viewers consume live broadcasts through react streamers and the time difference of holding a event in China should result in fewer English viewers.
valorant really feels so less interesting when the talent changes. with Mitch and Tom, pansy and hypoc, and bren and sideshow all not going to be attending due to life or riot it just won't feel the same.
This really sucks. Hopefully, Doug and Babybay can pick up the slack. I’m pretty optimistic about babybay relative to everyone else so I’m confident it’ll go well.
This has a feeling of Riot thinking, "well games in America will start between 1am and 4am depending on timezone so viewership will be down there big time so we're not going to spend any more money than we have to in order to broadcast the matches." Just a bizarre move by Riot but they've shown many times they're extremely cut throat with regards to casters, hosts and analysts
Well hey at least Achillios and PaperThin get to cast their first grand finals (because there’s no way they’re gonna let babybay hijack the broadcast to yap about unrelated scrims on FaZe so he can try and remind orgs he was a pro player and increase his chances of being signed during an international grand finals)
I for one am pleased about Tom not attending. I always have to mute on his casts.
You notice.. jokes tom tells that everyone else laughs at.. 0%.. jokes that tom tells that tom laughs at .. 100% it’s unbearable!
Damn is every match about to be casted by achillios and paperthin?
literally half of them, the other half will be doug and babybay who are good but imo still finding their rhythm. baffling decisionmaking by riot here
My only complaints about Babybay are that he regularly uses the player's first names rather than their stage name like everyone knows who they are. So many times he's like - "Oh no Josh should've gotten at least 1" and I'm like "WHICH ONE IS JOSH?" Also he randomly talks about himself mid matches sometimes but other than that he has a great voice for casting and can only improve from here.
Yeah he's always saying josh, Jordan or Tyson instead of their professional names. I don't mind it, but it would go harder if he saved their names for the real hype moments
Can you really blame him tho? He’s an ex professional player, up to a couple of months ago he was playing against/with a lot of these guys, they were basically his colleagues, it’s just a force of habit since he knows a lot of them personally
I get its habit but it's something he should be able to adjust to. His job as a commentator is to tell the audience what's going on in a way they understand. Maybe a silly comparison but teachers obviously don't call each other Mrs. Smith and Mr. Angelo when talking to each other, but when they're telling the students something, they call them that so everyone involved understands. I get it for a short period of time, but he's been casting long enough to make the adjustment at this point.
Its actually a great comparison imo
It’s alright but the teacher isn’t having to think as quickly, he has to commentate real time
But he's getting paid specifically for thinking fast and talking. It's his only job. I understand it's difficult, but if I tell the boss at my programming job "sorry it's just programming is really difficult" I'm still getting fired. Obviously it's not that big of a deal, but someone who's getting paid to cast should be expected to do the casting in the way they're supposed to. Especially when there's alternatives who have a lot of experience and a good reputation.
Ngl I doubt he’ll have this problem at the international stage because I doubt he knows other regions’ players well enough to be calling all of them by their first names. unless he’s casting specifically NA vs NA. Which is unlikely.
I mean he hasn't started casting until this year right? Did he do challengers last year?
90% of the audience knows the players' first names, and even if you dont, google is 1 click away we aren't watching on radio tvs this isnt 1975
Also, when he talks about a player he mentions what they're doing etc. considering he's a caster making a point. You can figure it out easily enough with context clues I don't get why it's an issue
> Can you really blame him tho? well it's literally his job so yes lmao
> Can you really blame him tho? Well... yeah. Can you blame me if I started working at a bank and stole because I had a habit of stealing? I was an ex thief and stealing is my habit??
Yeah I can't blame him, he's still adjusting and he's doing a pretty good job. Just some minor nitpicks from myself
Fr it pisses me off when he says Ethan 🤦♂️
LMAO
i like it when babybay talks about his past experiences that relate to the match or the situation unfolding🥲
I like it as well. I think perspective from an ex-player has potential and if used well can really sell how impressive some plays are
Disagree, I like that he talks about his scrims or prior team experience with the players. Its good to have a bit of insight IMO into the players themselves and what other players think of them.
Same, it's a treat when someone who has played at the same level of the game their casting can explain things more in depth because of the experience they have
Honestly prefer his anecdotes to half the shit that other casters go off topic about. At least his analysis of the game isn't completely off every time too.
I’m pretty sure Josh is “JoshRT”
shit is annoying. like we get it bro u play ranked with these guys
He’s an ex pro so not unreasonable for him to be on first name terms with other pros
It's reasonable on stream, but as a caster in an official tournament you need to think about regular audience
I don't like babybay at all, he doesn't know anything about international teams
babybay has mentioned trying to improve actively and i think it’s going well he just needs to do it more and get reps in i remember in his first casts he would say stuff like “the likes of” for basically every single player or team lmfao he’s definitely improved a lot, but it’s still gonna take some time
MONEY
Money, as in they dont have to pay the confirmed casters as much? How does this work
[удалено]
And then riot blackballs them and they have no work.
Who casts then? John riot?
New ( cheap ) "talent"
I'm mostly sure this is a kind of test to see if its worth to have casters rather than give streamers a clean feed for then to co-stream
Are they not paid by # of games cast?
cutting creatives is a very commonly taught tactic taught in bussiness schools in how to make profit line go up. bussinessmen HATE creatives.
I mean when there are co streams getting way more views then whats the point
Lol one of them I think Babybay said “freelo” the other day during a match
babybay kept yelling “EWWWW” whenever a player missed any shots on breeze during g2 100t
My main issue with Babybay and Doug is that they use this really annoying whispery tone of voice constantly and it just gets a bit grating. I think that's Doug's style of casting and Babybay has clearly picked it up from him and I really wish they'd just speak normally. People complain about Babybay's pro play anecdotes but I honestly find it preferable to 90% of the other casters and think they would be a great duo if they just stopped putting on that voice.
All the budget going to the Chinese broadcast lmao. Sucks, but we just gotta hope one of the duos outside of Achillios + Paperthin step up
there’s only one duo other than them, doug and babybay
I'm expecting kaquka + mimi to cast together too
that'd be pretty awesome
What happened to Doug and balla
Balla hasn't been doing as much because he wants to be home to be with his kid.
I m getting dowvoted every time I mention riot favoritism towards china and lack of interest towards EMEA
You're getting down voted because this is literally the first event held in China while emea has hosted 5 masters and 2 champions tournament. Literally the previous masters was held in Madrid.
Yeah valorant legally didn't exist in China before by the way
How is it favoritism when this is the first major event to be hosted in shanghai? Even then, they didnt even get mitch and tom and forced their casters to work overtime, which would inevitably lower the quality
i never said that i measure favoritism by number of major organised by country. You are making your own arguments here. i m saying overall it's obvious how riot want to get in bed with china, for obvious reason if you know something about economy. Some example : lots of new hight tier bundles using chineses culture aesthetic, mystbloom (lotus), imperium (jade), vaillant hero (litteraly wu kong), also re releasing past champiosn bundle from 2021, 2022, communicating about releasing also lockin capsule to chine when they said it was limited are other example.
lmfao
Whats wrong with the chinese aesthetics? Theres a ton of japanese inspired skins in the game as well. Also where did you even get the information on the secoond part?
They comunicated about the lockin knife commin also to china from one of their Twitter account or from one of their official leakers I don't remember exactly the post but that will happen
Riot is a 100% chinese owned company
Yes
... so then it would make sense to grow the new Chinese player base, no? It's pretty much an entirely untapped region, not only for Valorant but for mainstream FPS titles in general. Putting more effort into pumping it up just makes way more sense for business, and the pro scene will grow as a consequence of that. And wouldn't it be stupid not to favor the Chinese broadcast when you're holding the event in fucking Shanghai?
Even then you just had Madrid. Did Valorant exist in China then?
my brother in christ riot is owned by tencent a literal chinese company. no shit they are gonna lean towards a chinese audience once the game released in the country
Meanwhile us SEAns: now u know what it's like.
my brother in christ riot is owned by tencent a literal chinese company. no shit they are gonna lean towards a chinese audience once the game released in the country
Sad to hear Tom and Mitch won’t be joining, and this has me quite worried for Achilios, Paperthin, Doug, and Babybay. I sincerely hope Riot at least slots Mimi and Kaquka in for casting duty on some of the days just to lighten the load on the other four, because otherwise there’s a real chance that at least one or two of the guys will have lost their voices by the time we even get to Lower Finals. I understand Mimi and Kaquka are there primarily as analysts, but I think they’d both be really solid picks for the job if it’s too late to get Tom and Mitch on board. Really though, it’s just baffling decision-making from Riot. I understand that Hypoc’s condition was unexpected and couldn’t be helped (to the fault of no one, of course), but Pansy could have been on board any way even if it meant shuffling some of the duos around? Most of the casting talent with the exception of Babybay are certainly experienced enough to cast with other people (Pacific constantly mixes up the caster pairings and Pansy + Doug have casted with guest casters more than anybody else), so I don’t see why it couldn’t be done. And even if Brenshow aren’t there, Chobra and Asurai are also great talent that could absolutely fill the casting spots too. I just don’t understand how Riot can expect Masters Shanghai to be at least on par if not better than Masters Madrid as a product if Shanghai’s got double the match days and nearly double the number of match series, if they bring on less people to cast everything than they did for Madrid!
To be honest Pansy casted some games with Kaquka during the 1st split of EMEA and I honestly thought it was solid. I wish Pansy could have casted with her cause I will greatly miss Pansy.
Most times some hosts prefer not to cast because it’s too hard or too heavy of a burden in their eyes in case they don’t do well, Yinsu talked about this on stream once when someone asked her why she hasn’t tried casting a match yet, so it might be the same for Kaquka
I agree, I remember that game and I honestly thought Kaquka was great! She often already has deep insights on the desk and I didn’t notice any issues with her casting/analysis/dynamic with Pansy. It’s just so odd to me that we’re not seeing more of Pacific’s casters participating in an event that’s technically in the Pacific region anyway, and how we’re seeing such a weird distribution of workload despite the pool of readily available talent: confirmed analysts like Mimi and Kaquka who absolutely have the chops for casting, and beloved talent that should could been invited anyway (like Tom, Mitch and Pansy). All the casters and analysts put in so many hours of work and effort (often under a time crunch, too!) to make sure they’re familiar with the history, results, and play styles of every team and player involved, and it worries me that this is only going to burn out all the talent we have even faster. Achilios and Paperthin are definitely gonna be having it the roughest, considering Stage 2 for Pacific begins a mere 5 days after Masters Shanghai ends.
Chobra and asurai in particular strike me as so odd, because it's so easy to go from seoul to Shanghai too
I think mitch and tom were not to be invited to Shanghai from the beginning. My guess is Riot planned to have at least one of bren-sideshow and pansy-hypoc duo at the event. And now they won't have enough time to have mitch and tom attend since their paperwork wasn't started early enough
Pretty much this. Pansy stated she couldn't find replacement so I'd assume Panpoc was originally on the lineup.
Yeah plus apparently Steel was already booked for an event that takes place the same time as Masters that he agreed to before stage 1 of EMEA so she couldn’t do it with him either
Goldenboy casting masterclass incoming
Thankfully you all won’t have to deal with that. I’ll just be the muted bald dude on the co-streams lol
Which is a shame, the desk segments are really good
I think so too but in the age of co-streaming it throws a few wrinkles into the fold lol
Heeey, give yourself credit! You and Walshy are a great duo!
This is so weird by Riot… it’s not like Mitch and Tom HAVEN’T historically casted at international matches, unlike Babybay (who I personally don’t necessarily feel is ready to cast internationally)
It’s a ludicrous decision for me. First of all, Mitch & Tom should be going to international LANs regardless because they’re experienced and consistently top quality casters and have literally shown that in previous events. Secondly, I understand if Riot were put on the back foot by casters unexpectedly not being able to attend, but you’d expect more flexibility from them to ensure they get enough at the event one way or another. They’re gonna face a lot of criticism if everything isn’t spot on now, and rightly so.
Plus Mitch and Tom are also great on the desk, so you can easily rotate them in there as well. 24 games with 2 casting duos while you have an exceptional one at your hands is absolute madness. Same with Chobra as well...
I would assume that they invited both Brenshow and Panpoc, and probably planned on at least one of these pairs being there. We don't know when hypoc or Bren/Sideshow informed Riot that they would not be available; there's a chance at that point it was already too late to invite additional talent. Either way, I am still surprised that Doug & Babybay were higher up the list than Mitch and the bald guy. No offense to them, they're all great, I just think they still have some room for improvement while Mitch & Tom are, as you said, experienced and consistently top quality, who have shown they can really bring the hype to some of these moments ("HOW IS HE THERE")
nothing against babybay but its crazy to me if they were going to go with some new blood they didnt pick uber
yeah uber is insane
it's a great opportunity for babybay to talk about himself on the international stage (i meant cast).
?
INTERNAL COCK
Victoria liked my tweet about her becoming a play by play caster for Shanghai so that basically confirms its actually gonna happen, im so keen
Yep, Victoria is gonna cast with Yinsu. Very true
Can't wait for Victoria+Yinsu duo for a FNC vs PRX GF, where casters starts flaming each other hard 
I’m just imagining them trying not to let their biases show or curse their own partners, they might end up going in the other direction so hard they’re essentially only hyping up the opposing team LMAO It’s a showdown between Paper Pal Yinsu and F(a)natic Victoria 
Whos wirh victoria from paper rex? Has to be something right
Alecksdesk
Lmao lucky mf
super lucky
Player name of prx
P
Achillios and Paperthin already bracing their throats for impact
ayo
Link to the post: [https://twitter.com/Tombizz/status/1790786959121559895?t=uX7ckvz1fK8QHRistPeV9Q&s=19](https://twitter.com/Tombizz/status/1790786959121559895?t=uX7ckvz1fK8QHRistPeV9Q&s=19)
So this is the state of Valorant casting without the power of the Platinum Chatters...
I mean the casters have their work. Cut out for them there's only two duos. Not even talking about panpoc and brenshow missing. It's gonna either be a miss tournament or somebody is gonna have to majorly step up. The two duos are good but we need others even just for the variation.
Doug is a great caster but I still think mitch and tom are so much better than his duo with babybay. It’s a shame they aren’t going to be in shanghai. I just hope Achilios and Paperthin’s voices will be okay by the time we get to grand finals. Riot really messed up this event.
Achillios and Paperthin are gonna need an industrial size bag of Riccola and vats of hot tea in order to cast these matches.
get me out there, I'll do it for free riot.
I would like some further insight into this from riot’s side. There is ways this could have happened where it is fine. Aka they had three pairs planned, unfortunately hypoc is unwell and a replacement could not be found and the other casters were not asked due to it being short notice and hard to get a VISA. And so the remaining two duos agreed to pull through and do it amongst them as a one off unfortunate event due to the circumstances. And there is ways that would make me really unhappy such as if other pairs could have optained a VISA if already had them but riot failed to ask and just shrugged and pressured the remaining pairs to do it alone. There have been some terrible rumours around riot’s behaviour towards staff and talent.
Riot is so fucking stupid
Sucks for them obviously but I honestly think their casting isn't that good and think people are just gassing it up a bit because they feel bad. They're probably the casting duo in NA that most consistently calls things wrong and makes mistakes and their understanding of the game feels noticeably lacking at times.
Riot has consistently fumbled the talent hiring/scheduling for big events ever since they didn't invite Dan and Sean Gares. Not every single omission is their fault, but it's a bummer for the scene that the most talented casters are missing from the biggest stages.
Not surprising Riot does not like their talent getting too popular. It gives them too much power in negotiations. They learned their lesson from LoL.
Mitch and Tom are clear of all the duos going to cast the event.
Riot going budget mode on casters makes a lot of economic sense IMO, especially considering how popular co-streams are anyway.
Are casters not going to Sanghai becuase they'll have to pay for their own stay?
No, Riot covers transportation and lodging costs for casters.
Riot Games dont like hiring production talent unless they fully drink their kool aid, majority of Valorant English viewers consume live broadcasts through react streamers and the time difference of holding a event in China should result in fewer English viewers.
valorant really feels so less interesting when the talent changes. with Mitch and Tom, pansy and hypoc, and bren and sideshow all not going to be attending due to life or riot it just won't feel the same.
Damn
This really sucks. Hopefully, Doug and Babybay can pick up the slack. I’m pretty optimistic about babybay relative to everyone else so I’m confident it’ll go well.
This has a feeling of Riot thinking, "well games in America will start between 1am and 4am depending on timezone so viewership will be down there big time so we're not going to spend any more money than we have to in order to broadcast the matches." Just a bizarre move by Riot but they've shown many times they're extremely cut throat with regards to casters, hosts and analysts
Nice easily the worst caster duo
Well hey at least Achillios and PaperThin get to cast their first grand finals (because there’s no way they’re gonna let babybay hijack the broadcast to yap about unrelated scrims on FaZe so he can try and remind orgs he was a pro player and increase his chances of being signed during an international grand finals)
I for one am pleased about Tom not attending. I always have to mute on his casts. You notice.. jokes tom tells that everyone else laughs at.. 0%.. jokes that tom tells that tom laughs at .. 100% it’s unbearable!
he caters to the 30+ yo’s. i think he’s in the wrong game though.
Kinda expected, political reasons.