After another tough loss at the 2024 VCT Pacific Kickoff, Bleed Esports’ VALORANT squad is heading home early after going winless at the tournament—and their sudden departure has many fans looking for answers.
Superstar Jaccob “yay” Whiteaker voiced his perspective on social media after the disappointing result, stating fans were being “brutal” towards him and his teammates. He also revealed he was dealing with some unusual vision problems during that game that cost the team some rounds due to his inability to react to enemy players.
The 25-year-old veteran said he has “never had [his] vision become blurry during a game,” and he isn’t even sure what caused the affliction. He did, however, step up to the criticisms, and even said that if fans were looking for someone or something to blame, they should point their fingers towards him.
Across the three game series vs. Global Esports, yay finished with a team-worst 148 average combat score, and was tied for the lowest amount of kills on the server at 35. In the final deciding match, he underperformed with a substandard score of six kills and 19 deaths, even though his teammates Egoist and Deryeon tried to carry with 50 kills between the two of them.
Yay, on the other hand, hasn’t won a game since February 2023, when he was part of Cloud9’s roster at the 2023 LOCK//IN in São Paulo. He was still playing plenty of Jett and Chamber during that era of VALORANT, but in recent times, he has been placed on other roles and agents, such as Viper and Skye.
It also doesn’t help that Bleed Esports will need to wait an extended amount of time before stepping onto the stage again, due to the heavily criticized format of the global VALORANT competitive scene. But if Bleed is to succeed in VCT competition, they’ll need to use this time off to figure out their yay issues.
