Valorant caps off 2024 season with Ascension

JAKARTA, Indonesia – The 2024 season of the Valorant Champions Tour (VCT) came to a conclusion with the VCT Ascensions Pacific, with South Korean team Sin Prisa Gaming (SPG) pulling off a thrilling 3-2 victory over home squad BOOM Esports.

Leading up to the grand finals, SPG had not dropped a single map loss and was considered the top team to beat, having already defeated BOOM Esports, which saw the Indonesian squad drop to the lower brackets. But the latter clawed its way from the lower brackets, defeating Singapore's disguised, Japan's Riddle and Thailand's Full Sense to set-up a rematch with the South Koreans.

SPG almost churned out a sweep victory with domination in the first map of Sunset (13-6) and managed to turn around the second map of Icebox (13-10) after falling at the half with a 3-9 score. The third map saw both teams trading rounds, ending the half at a split 6-6 score. But SPG took six consecutive rounds to move within match point. The Indonesian crowd, however, motivated BOOM Esports to take the map into overtime, with SPG suffering its first map loss of the tournament at 12-14.

Hoping to end things and not turn the match-up into a series, SPG took an early lead at Haven with a 9-3 half, only for BOOM Esports to string together an eight-round winning streak to force a decider at 10-13.

In what has been described as a perfect Valorant match-up, SPG and BOOM Esports went all out in Bind, forcing four overtimes until SPG's Yang "Persia" Zi-on secured a clutch play, winning the 1-3 by securing the elimination to activate his ultimate in the nick of time to finish off BOOM Esports with a millisecond left until the defuse.

The win sees SPG promoted to the franchise league VCT Pacific, competing with nine other teams in what is considered the toughest Valorant tournament in the region. They would be the fourth South Korean team in the league after DRX, Gen.G, and T1.

The 2024 VCT Ascension would be the last time a Filipino is assured a slot after Riot Games announced changes to the esports ecosystem earlier this year. Previously, winners of the country specific challenger leagues get an automatic slot in VCT Pacific. Come 2025, the six previously separate challenger leagues from Indonesia, Malaysia/Singapore, Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam and Taiwan/Hong Kong will be merged into one Challengers Southeast Asia (SEA) with no announcement yet how many slots from the new Challengers SEA are allotted for VCT Ascensions.

NAOS Esports, the Philippine representatives to the two previous Ascensions, had almost ascended to the main league in 2023, falling in the semifinals; while the team saw an early exit in this year's event at the hands of Japan's Riddle leaving Team Secret as the lone Filipino team still in the VCT Pacific franchise.