The Real Story of Vaevictis eSports
Of course an all-women's esports team is the infamous one.
This article has been edited post-publication to reflect new information obtained by the author.
Hello I’m Benjamin Mock and this is Sports Untold.
Today’s story is something I’ve been working on for a couple months now. We’re looking at the real story of Vaevictis eSports, an all-women League of Legends team who gained infamy and meme status thanks to their winless 2019 season.
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In the world of esports, Vaevictis eSports is a name synonymous with failure. Their winless 2019 season in League of Legends’ top Russian league, the LCL, has gone down in infamy.
Search the team name on YouTube and the top three results have over 6 million combined views. One video with just under 200K views is footage of the team’s infamous 13-minute loss (setting the league’s record for shortest match). The other two are video essays - one with just under 400K views which calls them a ‘Case Study on the Failure of Women in Professional Gaming’ and the other, with nearly 6M views on its own, asks ‘What happened to the All Female League of Legends Team’.
For two years, the team has been mocked for its performance and upheld as the cornerstone of why women aren’t cut out for top-level esports. However, today we give the story the examination it deserves - exploring its origins, what really happened during the season, and where they are now.
Part 1 - An all-women’s team
Vaevictis’ 2018 season ended on August 19th, with a loss to Team Just Alpha. It was their 11th loss of the Summer Split, and their 3-11 record saw them finish 7th in the eight-team league. Typically they would have had to fight for their survival in the promotion playoffs, but their opponents forfeited the August 30th match, keeping Vaevictis in the LCL.
The Summer Split had been an improvement over the 1-13 Spring Split, but the 4-24 2018 season left Vaevictis in dire straits. The team had been in the LCL since the league’s founding in 2016 and had finished most of their splits in the bottom half of the standings. Their best finish had been 2nd place in Spring 2017.
However, 2019 offered a moment of respite. Riot Games Russia had transitioned to a ‘closed’ league system, offering a set number of places and no pro/rel system. Vaevictis took the first season under this new structure as an opportunity to experiment ahead of 2020.
Vaevictis team manager, and later team captain, Ksenia “Trianna” Mescheryakova, explained during an interview over Discord how the team’s direction for 2019 was decided at a meeting in late 2018:
“We had been talking with our CEO for two years, saying it would be nice to have an all female roster. Just see how they do, how we can do it. But it was just talks. Then one night, we had a team meeting and I told him that I had a full female roster for Russian female tournaments and I think it was going to be fun. And at this moment, he went silent for three minutes and I’m like “hello, hey, everyone’s here?” and he then goes “are all of them from Moscow?”, I say “I guess yes?” and he say “okay, what do you think? Maybe it’s the day we can really try because Riot Games could close the league and we might lose our spot. Now is the time to experiment.”
Trianna had been with the team since 2016 and her account was invaluable to telling the full story of the team.
Vaevictis officially announced their plan to field an all-women team in the LCL via a post to Russian social media platform, VK:
“It’s no secret that in 2020 we will encounter a new league system, but for now it’s time to experiment…First of all, we would like to check how competitive the women’s team will be on the professional stage, how strong the progress of this team will be, and what they will be able to demonstrate in the game.”
What was this?
This is a good point to ask exactly why Vaevictis made this decision. One woman on a team at this level of play is uncommon enough, let alone an all-women team. And thus, it would be easy to simply say that this was a publicity stunt. The team was underperforming, the season didn’t really have consequences in the eyes of ownership, an all-women team would at least put the name in people’s mouths.
But Trianna shone a clearer light on the situation:
“We didn’t feel ready. We thought this was a joke. We were really excited to do this but no-one expected the whole world to pay attention. We thought it was just about staying around the LCL, and maybe a little bit more. And so when everyone everywhere started talking about us, we were just like “what the…hell is going on?”
So not a publicity stunt and more of a “hey, we might not be here next year so why not?” sort of move. And as Trianna went on to explain:
“Vaevictis was always like this. We were a very spontaneous organisation.”
Vaevictis announced their all-women team on February 10th, six days before the start of the 2019 Spring Split. According to Trianna, who would be serving as the team’s starting ADC, the team been practicing together for about two months.
The team was a collection of free agents and Trianna, with the roster largely playing as support mains at the game’s Diamond I ranking (each ‘tier’, i.e. Diamond, divided into four divisions from IV (lowest) to I (highest).
This was another point people loved to bring up, the fact that it was five support players. Oh, how ever would they be able to compete?
“Yeah, if you look at our solo PPG [picks per game], we all were on support. But when we were playing as a team, and were able to chill, we all had 2…3 champions ready for every role.”
Part 2 - The Spring Split
Vaevictis opened their season against RoX, who had gone 20-8 across 2018, on February 16th. During the pick/ban phase, where players choose which character they wish to play as and ban the ones they would not like to face, RoX banned five support characters. The LCL later issued an official warning to RoX for behaviour that violated rules on discrimination, with the league’s official statement highlighting that:
“Although banning 5 support champions is not prohibited by the rules, Riot Games and the wider gaming community took this as a manifestation of disrespect for the players of Vaevictis.”
However, Trianna didn’t see what happened as a problem:
“It was a joke. Like if you look at our accounts, of course you’re going to ban supports. But how could it be disrespect? They were really good prepared for us…I was really surprised that everyone social media was blaming them for these bans because before the split, everyone knew our accounts. No-one in the team was offended because, why?…Like you remember in LEC [the game’s top European league], there would be 5 AD Carry bans for Rekkles [one of the best ADC players in the world]”
She further elaborated on how she felt this was really just an extension of the league’s atmosphere:
“Everyone was joking. We were all joking. We could go to AHaHaCiK [jungler for LCL team Unicorns of Love] and say “This is your jungle. This is our jungle. Don’t cross the river please” and he’s like “what the fuck? This is the game. Why do I need not to cross? If I don’t cross, I can’t beat you in in your jungle”…We were always joking behind the scenes”
RoX won the match in 21 minutes and 2 seconds, outkilling Vaevictis by a score of 12-1. The following day, they played Vega Squadron and it would be this match that gave the story of Vaevictis its memetic slogan. We’ve all heard of ‘28-3’ but for esports fans, that same energy is embodied in the phrase ‘52-2’, referring to the number of kills achieved by Vega Squadron and Vaevictis respectively.
Girls Can(‘t) Play
It’s losses like the 52-2 result that people point to as to why women aren’t cut out for esports. But in comments made to German media and reported by regional newspaper The Main Post in December 2020, Trianna thinks the results had nothing to do with gender:
“We're just bad players. I don't understand how gender should affect performance…These guys are professional players with a high position in the solo leaderboard and it would be stupid to be disappointed because you can't beat five players who are so good."
The women playing on Vaevictis were not bad players in the scope of League of Legends, it was simply that the players on other LCL teams were better and playing at a higher level.
As Summer Split top laner Anastasiya "HellMa" Pleyko said in the same interview:
“Take five men with diamond rank, put them against these teams and they play just as bad as we do. I know a lot of women who are better and would have performed better. "
But women’s sports fans are painfully familiar with the (primarily) men who want to make it about gender. They’re the same guys who haven’t picked up a soccer ball, basketball, or hockey stick in a competitive sense since high school (if ever) and yet think they would dominate a matchup against an NWSL, WNBA, or NWHL player.
Another thing side-tracking Vaevictis was something that affects everything team - drama. Every team, every organisation, goes through drama. Every team has internal issues. In the case of Vaevictis, it was a result of young players with minimal pro experience and clashing personalities. People said things they instantly regretted but couldn’t take back. In one instance, Riot suspended one of Vaevictis’ players, TR1GGERED, for two games for comments she made about a teammate. But with the amount of scrutiny the team was getting, every incident that became public knowledge was blown out of proportion. Vaevictis couldn’t do anything without it become a full-blown negative news cycle for the team.
The team tried to address the problems and poor results with roster changes, starting at the end of February. Ankote, who had been at the centre of the problems with the TR1GGERED, was benched with TR1GGERED taking over at support and Elina “Intgration” Sokolova joining the team as the new top laner. The team would also use Kristina “Don Hell” Kurakova as a sub for the latter part of the split.
However, despite the changes, the team finished the Spring Split 0-14. The next worse team was Team Just, who finished 4-10 (2-10 if you exclude the wins against Vaevictis). At the end of the split, Trianna felt one thing:
“I was really tired of the drama because I really can’t understand why people can’t just play five weeks and then go do whatever they want…And I was mentally tired because of this, not because of the people around us. I wasn’t sure if we were going to stay in summer split but I was 100% sure I didn’t want to work with people who were like this. We hadn’t had a lot of fights but we were mentally…dull, because of the atmosphere.”
Part 3 - The Summer Split
The team made major changes to the team after the split in preparation for summer. TR1GGERED and Ankote were both released, with the team looking far and wide for replacements. However, this proved challenging:
“So we’re talking to all these girls. And okay, one girl doesn’t want to move because she’s scared of Russians, she’s scared of Russia. Some of them had studies and they couldn’t just give those up. We were talking to Remilia [an iconic player who had been the first woman to play in North America’s LCS], but she took too long to think about it.”
Trianna also alleged logistical roadblocks on the part of Riot Games, the developers of League of Legends. According to Trianna, Riot will often provide teams with dummy accounts at a certain level of ranking to use for tryouts. These are especially useful if you are trying to recruit outside your home region. After all, a Russian team might not have a diamond-ranked account on the EU severs/EU players may not have a diamond-ranked CIS server account. However, Trianna claimed that Riot Games Russia failed to provide these accounts despite multiple requests from Vaevictis. This limited the recruiting Vaevictis was able to do.
I reached out to Riot Games Russia about these claims but they did not respond to this specific enquiry in time for publication. However, in an email received post-publication, Gevorg Akopyan, Head of Communications for Riot Games Russia & CIS, informed Sports Untold that:
“Riot provides accounts like that [matching the description of those detailed above] only to professional players with contracts in place, not to candidates the team is trying out.”
At the end of the process, Vaevictis ended up adding two Russian players - Anastasiya “HellMa” Pleyko and Olga “PewPewSolari” Arsenyeva. Coach Daniel “Remus” Klimanov would also play a number of games for the team in the latter part of the Summer Split, taking over the mid lane role from PewPewSolari.
The team mentality changed as well:
“We were really trying to be serious going into the Summer Split….We started plus/minus the same as the Spring Split, but we really tried.”
The team did improve. Below is a graph of kills scored by Vaevictis per game of the 2019 season. In blue is the Spring Split and in orange, the Summer Split. As it shows, the team was playing better in the Summer Split. They were more consistent. Their average kills per game rose from 5.8 in the Spring Split to 8.1 in the Summer. Their average gold per game also rose from split to split, rising from 29.4K to 33.1K.
However, they still went 0-14 despite their best efforts.
The memeing and derision began almost immediately. Those who didn’t believe that women could succeed in esports felt vindicated. And even if they weren’t crusading on that specific mentality, who could resist the meme of an all-women esports team going 0-28?
The final kicker came from Riot. In February 2020, ahead of the 2020 LCL Spring Split, Riot officially disqualified Vaevictis due to the organisation showing an “unacceptable level of competitiveness” in 2019, citing their losses and disparity in in-game performance compared to their opponents. However, in the league’s pre-season announcement for 2020, they did state that:
“At the same time, the organization [Vaevictis] will be able to participate in the Open Cup and has a chance to return to the LCL next year.”
Personally, I find the expulsion ridiculous. SeolHaeOne Prince went 1-17 in the 2020 LCK Summer Split but they weren’t banned from competing. Echo Fox went 1-17 in 2016 LCS Summer Split but they weren’t banned. The #1 seed from the LCS, TSM, went 0-6 in during the 2020 Worlds group stage. Despite being the first top seed to ever go winless at Worlds, no-one is questioning whether or not North America should be allowed to send teams to the tournament.
Teams do badly all the time but it feels like Vaevictis was singled out.
Part 4 - Vaevictis keeps going
That’s where the story typically ends for most people, for the trolls and the content creators. Vaevictis launched an all-women’s team in the LCL, went 0-28 and got kicked out of the league, then disappeared.
The thing is, Vaevictis didn’t go anywhere.
Even before their suspension, they were already moving on from the LCL season. In September 2019, the government of Taichung City, Taiwan invited the team to participate in events at the CyberSport Festival.
The event organisers paid Vaevictis’ expenses, allowing them to travel and compete at the Festival. There had also been an invitation to attend an event in the US but expenses were not covered so Vaevictis were unable to attend.
The official Vaevictis Twitter hasn’t been active since early May 2020. However, the last thing they posted was a retweet of this from their current top laner, Chloe “PowerToyZ” Konarski:
The team, still captained by Trianna, had qualified for La Ligue Féminine, an all women’s round-robin/knockout tournament that took place in late June/early July of 2020.
Vaevictis would finish 5th in the round-robin, just outside the cut-off for the semifinals.
But other things were in the works, especially for Trianna.
As well as her work with Vaevictis, she had been contacted by organizers from Brazil. They had been inspired by Vaevictis and wanted Trianna’s help to establish and build a better esports scene for women in their home nation. Given how Brazil treats women in sport - whether it’s failing one of the greatest ever to play soccer or destroying their own national women’s basketball team, it’s no surprise that women’s esport would be starting from the ground up.
But the fact that the work is happening is amazing. With the lack of support that the women’s scene receives, it’s up to the women in esports to create something for themselves.
Last year, I wrote a piece for Power Plays about women in esports. So with the efforts she was aiding across the world, I asked Trianna when she thought we would see the first woman playing in Worlds, the year-ending championships that sees the best teams in League of Legends clash in a month-long tournament.
“It depends on the management on the esports. I mean, Riot Games, I mean the management of the teams. If the management tries to introduce more players, in the academy teams, maybe just give them the opportunities to try out, then maybe very soon. But if the atmosphere is like no, we won’t look at these options, then that’s going to be a problem for female scene improvement. It just depends on people who are working in esports.”
Vaevictis is still out there, still playing, still competing. In fact, they will be taking part in a tournament tomorrow [February 13th], which you will be able to watch here. Better still, it’s an all-women tournament that’s helping to build that space for women in the industry.
And while they are a meme to some, they are an inspiration for many, many others.
I asked Trianna if she had a message for any women who were looking to make it in esports:
“Don’t be scared to show yourself. Be brave, and don’t care about people’s opinion. And most important - don’t worry about people saying things about your skill, or about you. Because you know what you deserve, and where you deserve to be.”
Riot Games
However, a lot of the team’s energy is being dedicated into getting back into the LCL.
The 2021 LCL Spring Split begins on February 13th and as it stands, Vaevictis won’t be part of it. CrowCrowd currently occupies the spot in the LCL originally held by Vaevictis, with the team being added to the league in the days after Vaevictis’ expulsion.
At the time of writing, Vaevictis remain in limbo. And as Trianna reiterated multiple times during our conversation:
“This is our spot. Our spot. And we want our spot.”
According to Trianna, Vaevictis still owns their original spot in the league and that is not Riot’s to give to another team without reinstating Vaevictis or compensating the organisation.
Riot Games did not respond to an enquiry about Vaevictis’ claim of ownership of a place in the league in time for publication. However, they did dispute the claim post-publication, with Gevorg Akopyan stating in an email that:
“No, they don’t [have ownership of or a claim of ownership to a place in the league]. Riot and LCL teams sign participation agreements for a particular season. VAE had a contract for 2019.”
Akopyan also elaborated on where things stood between the LCL and Vaevictis eSports:
“We communicated publicly that VAE [Vaevictis] isn’t permanently excluded from the pro-scene and will have the chance to come back to LCL in the future.
At the end of 2020, the EPG [Elements Pro Gaming] team did not confirm their participation in LCL in the 2021 season. According to our established processes, we reached out to several CIS esports organisations, including VAE, to learn if they are interested in joining LCL and if so to prepare an application covering their strategy for the team, sponsors, and marketing. VAE applied, but their application has lost to another one (CTRL PLAY).”
But at the end of the day, this means little to Vaevictis. Even if they have no tangible or legal claim to a league spot, they believe that they were unfairly removed from the league. What they want is closure on this issue, preferably by being re-admitted to the LCL.
I asked Trianna if they would field another all-women team if they were allowed back into the league:
“Women will always be a part of Vaevictis Esports. Maybe we would do five women again. Maybe we would do a mixed team. But there will always be women at Vaevictis.”
TLDR
It’s really easy to look at Vaevictis eSports, a team of women who went 0-28 in a professional League of Legends league, and dismiss them as either a joke or a publicity stunt.
But that simply isn’t true.
The truth is that the story of Vaevictis eSports is one of a group of talented women who were thrust into a challenging situation. They suffered the problems that every esports team suffers, except public scrutiny and the fact that they were women in a male-dominated environment turned every situation up to 11.
Look at the faces of these women. For two years, Vaevictis has been painted as this paragon of failure, or poor exploited women in the clutches of a cold publicity stunt. But this is how the team actually looked during their time in the LCL:
And this is what Trianna had to say about the team’s time in the LCL:
“When I talk with my ex-teammates, they all miss this. They’ve all said that if they [the league] were like, come back to play, they’d all drop their stuff and come back.”
These women wanted to be there. They wanted to play and they tried their best. And it feels as if they were punished for this.
Maybe the plan wasn’t perfect but you can’t say that these women didn’t embrace the challenge. They went out there week after week and played every game start to finish.
And they are still out there. They are fighting for their right to play. They play in every tournament they can find to stay sharp and to improve their skills. They take this seriously and they want to be taken seriously. And now, their captain is helping other women around the world fight for those exact same values and opportunities.
That’s their story. That’s the real Vaevictis eSports.