The First Everything From The Ignition Series In VALORANT

The Ignition Series of VALORANT tournaments are the first collection of tournaments backed by Riot themselves, the developers of the game. With it, have come a lot of “firsts”, initial records set by players and tournament organisers that lay the standard for hopefully many more series to come. As it draws to a close, we take a look at some of the highlights of the “firsts” in VALORANT’s official tournaments. 

The first Ignition Series event was the Rage Invitational in Japan, all the way back in June. This event peaked at 39,734 viewers, setting the bar for the rest of the tournaments to come. Notable here is the first-ever ace in an Ignition Series event from Laz (Absolute Jupiter), widely regarded to be the best Japanese team (having won almost everything there), capable of competing against teams from other regions once travel is less restricted. 

Even with a language barrier, it is fun to go back in time and hear just how thrilled the casters were to see the (then new) default sky smoke strategy from the attacking Brimstone. Laz, on defence playing Cypher, does not let this stop him, picking up a few spam-through-smoke kills on his way to the first-ever Riot-sponsored ace, a historic feat.

Also in this event was the Ignition Series’ first-ever 13-0 map, brought to us once again by the kings of the Japanese scene, Absolute Jupiter. Absolutely rolling through SunSister Rapid on Haven, they asserted their dominance with three players hitting above 15 kills despite playing the minimum amount of rounds one can play in VALORANT.

After this, was the G2 Invitational in Europe, which brought us the first-ever 30-kill map in an Ignition Series match, with Yuri dropping exactly 30 for Team ANGE1 against Team Ex6TenZ. EU as a region was a little (perhaps reasonably) slower than almost every other region (barring Korea), to pick up players. So it is interesting to go back to this one and see a lot of players playing together in unsigned, unorganised groups in an official Ignition Series event. All the more impressive then for Yuri to drop 30, on Sage, no less, perhaps showing us an inkling of what players like TenZ are capable of in NA. 

Speaking of TenZ, he shattered this kill record when it came time for NA in the Ignition Series, at the T1 x Nerd Street Showdown. He dropped 39 kills for Cloud 9 against Envy, and while this isn’t a perfect round number, it was considerably higher than the next best effort at the time (33), and the record stood for quite a while. Sinatraa has come the closest thus far, hitting 38 against TSM in the FaZe Invitational, in a losing map no less, just like TenZ before him.

• Read More - Somebody Help TenZ

However, it wasn’t NA’s time just yet. The next Ignition Series tournament was the Empire Play North Africa Invitational, which, although with a smaller prize pool and an arguably lower standard of play, brought us the first-ever best of 5 series, being the finals between Divine Vendetta and Viboras. Tunisian player Bramz also was the first to break 60 kills over a whole series in this event, hitting a 64 made possible by the three maps played and a standout performance in all three. In the Vitality European Open later, ardiis will come close to this record, hitting 62 kills in the entire series, but he had one extra map to do it with, as this was a 3-1 best of 5 series going to his team G2 over Prodigy. However, although this does not break a kill record, this match marked the first-ever 4-map match in an Invitational Series game.

What the first NA Ignition event, the T1 x Nerd Street Gamers Showdown did bring us, however, was the first-ever $50,000 prize pool, dwarfing every event thus far. It also was the first Ignition Series event to break 50,000 viewers, and both these 50k markers would be met for the first time in Europe later at the WePlay! Invitational.

However, speaking of viewers - completely unprecedented was the final NA Ignition Series event, the FaZe Invitational. This marked the first event in the Ignition Series to break not only 100,000 viewers, but also 150,000, peaking at a whopping 170,087. This is an incredible feat that speaks volumes for the growth of the esport to come, and is a testament to the performance of the entire broadcast team, on-camera talent, and every player to put on such a good show. It’s a shame, though - all of those people did all of that work for that fantastic event when they could instead just be Shroud, take 45 days off, press “go live” and hit 517k easy.

Images via Riot Games