Leviatán Won Masters London but Missed Champions Shanghai: Is the VCT Points System Unfair?

Masters London 2026 ended with a convincing championship from Leviatán – a team from the Americas. One month later, shocking news: Leviatán did not qualify for Champions Shanghai. How can a team that just defeated the world's best fail to attend the year's most prestigious tournament? The answer lies in the VCT points system, where seasonal consistency is valued over peak performance. Let's go back to the start of the season. VCT 2026 consists of three stages: Kickoff, Stage 1, and Stage 2, plus the mid-season Masters. Each win, each placement earns VCT points. At the end, the top teams by points in each region qualify for Champions. Leviatán began with a major handicap: star rookie Neon (Bruno Rodríguez) was underage for Kickoff. Despite winning Masters with Neon, they missed early points. Having closely followed VCT this season, I noticed Leviatán created a huge points gap from the start. In Kickoff, without Neon, they earned only 3 points. Stage 1: 4th place – 6 points. Stage 2: 5th place – 3 points. Adding 3 points from Masters, Leviatán's total was 15. This placed them 5th or 6th in the Americas region, where only 3-4 spots are available for Champions. Meanwhile, NRG and G2 Esports – teams that didn't win Masters but remained consistent all season – surpassed them. Notably, Leviatán themselves are partly to blame. According to Sliggy, a top Valorant caster and tactician, they shot themselves in the foot. In Stage 2, they banned their best map Split (11-0 record) and experimented with a Neon-Phoenix composition instead of their trusted style. Sliggy said: 'They made mistakes. You cannot experiment when points are still fragile.' This is a counterintuitive angle: the Masters champion lost not only due to the system, but also due to their own strategic decisions. However, the intense competition of the Americas region cannot be ignored. Sliggy described Americas as 'absolutely stacked' – any team in the top 6 could beat each other. Leviatán is just one of them. If they played in a weaker region like CN or Pacific, 15 points might have been enough. Regional unfairness is inherent in esports, but VCT highlights it by not offering an automatic berth for the Masters winner. The article from Esports Insider sparked a necessary debate: Should VCT change the rules to give an automatic slot to the mid-season tournament winner? Or is the current points system fair, rewarding consistency and roster depth? Looking ahead, Riot Games may need to consider changes. For Leviatán, they must learn to balance peak performance at a single event with consistency over a full season. And as I once wrote: 'Fate is never biased; it only rewards those who know how to read RNG.'