Cloud9 officially part ways with yay

Lately, Jaccob "yay" Whiteaker leaving Cloud9 has been the hottest topic. Today, the organization shared a video on Twitter featuring the founder and CEO, Jack Etienne, and the head coach Matthew "mCe" Elmore. They sat together and talked about the future of C9 VALORANT, mentioning the departure of yay.

Cloud9 completed the acquisition of yay to form one of the most vigorous rosters in VCT 2023 Americas. However, things did not go as planned for the organization. They made a decent start to the off-season by reaching the Red Bull Home Ground 2022 Grand Final, despite getting swept against 100 Thieves. However, the real trouble began in Sao Paulo as C9 bid farewell to VCT 2023 LOCK//IN after the second round.

It was rumored by multiple journalists that yay would leave the team, and the official announcement came today. Jack Etienne and mCe discussed what went wrong in a video while giving the news of yay’s departure.

“Back in September, when we were looking for players to join our VALORANT team, we had the opportunity to pick up yay. And we were super excited because he was the best player in VALORANT at that point of time,” Etienne said.

What’s next for yay?

yay’s C9 career lasted only five months. Right now, every partnered team have built their rosters and have been training for a while. There are many questions regarding yay’s next stop as he could either take a break, join one of the partnered teams as sixth and try his luck there, or he could also compete in the NA Challengers.

After yay’s departure, Cloud9’s roster is as follows:

• Nathan "leaf" Orf
• Erick "Xeppaa" Bach
• Anthony "vanity" Malaspina
• Jordan "Zellsis" Montemurro
• Mateja "Qpert" Mijovic
• Matthew "mCe" Elmore (Head Coach)
• Erik "vapen" Sutton (Assistant Coach)
• Gaël "vexel" Attal (Coach)