Team Liquid and Former Curse Become One

Hey, everyone.

Today, I'm making the biggest announcement of my career. It's a huge day, both for Team Liquid as an organization, and for myself on a personal level.

I'm writing this from my perspective; you can get the other side if you click the orange link above.

From this moment onward, myself and Steve Arhancet — the owner of the organization previously known as Curse Gaming — will go forward as co-owners in Team Liquid. All teams previously known as Curse Gaming will now compete under the Liquid name.

This means Team Liquid now has a League of Legends team, and will be competing in LCS. On top of that, we will be fielding a Challenger team for LoL. For our Smash division, HungryBox and Chillindude will be joining up with Ken and KDJ, while Nuckledu will be representing us in Street Fighter.

And this is only the beginning. You can expect plenty more from Team Liquid soon enough.

Before I go any further, it is important to point out that the organization known as ‘Curse Gaming’ and the company called Curse Inc. are completely separate entities. This past year, Curse Inc. was the title sponsor of Curse Gaming. Curse Inc.'s title sponsorship ended last year, and what Steve and I are embarking upon has no relation to Curse Inc.

The message here needs to be clear as day: What we're doing is no ordinary partnership. It's not Team Liquid becoming the new title sponsors of an LCS team. This is the full-blown merging of two organizations under the Team Liquid banner.




Steve originally approached me as he planned for the future of his organization heading into 2015. At that point, he had been running Curse eSports for three years, building it from the ground up into an LCS powerhouse. While I didn’t know much about his team, I knew they were known for treating their players well, and investing heavily into improving their squads.

I did have a good impression of Steve himself — Savjz had always spoken very highly of him, and he had acted with the utmost professionalism when Liquid acquired Savjz from Curse eSports’ HearthStone team. When he asked to schedule a mystery call, I was intrigued by what he might have to say.

I was very surprised, at first, when the idea to combine our two organizations came up. But as we continued to talk, it all started to make more and more sense.

Our two organizations complemented each other very well, whether it was players, teams, sponsors or staff.

We had become accomplished and well-known in games such as StarCraft, Dota2, and HearthStone, but hadn’t broken into the vast market of League of Legends. Meanwhile, Steve’s organization had grown to become one of the most popular teams in all of LoL.

The Liquid brand had become one of the most respected and recognized in esports, while Steve’s organization found itself with a lot of fans who no longer had a name to get behind.

Where our staff had picked up experience in areas such as creating written content and managing a large community, Steve’s team brought skills we had been looking for, among which a great video team.

Our two organizations didn’t just complement each other with our different strengths — we could combine to become more than the sum of our parts. Together we could become more complete, stronger organization.

On a personal level, Steve and I got along really well. We shared similar opinions on the direction we wanted our organizations to go and the values we wanted them to stand for. This is something that was really important to both of us. If we hadn’t shared the same principles, we couldn’t have gone through with this decision — no matter how much sense it would have made otherwise.

After extensive discussion with Steve, I knew there was only one decision I could make.

Up until now, I’d thought it impossible to make this kind of choice for Liquid and myself. I can scarcely believe it even now, but what else can I say? That's just how well our respective ideals meshed.

Finally, I have to mention the incredible coincidence of Steve's ID being LiQuiD112. I'm not one to read into signs, but seriously...




Everything made a lot of sense from an organizational and logistical perspective, but that still doesn't fully answer why I've decided to merge Liquid with another organization.

I can proudly say Liquid is held in high esteem in the esports industry, and people have come to expect the best from us. However, we've found it difficult to compete with teams like EG or Cloud9 for the top players and teams in the world.

Together, our organization will be able to achieve much more than what we could have separately. While we always had every intention to find a Dota team, the merger pushes us that much closer to achieving that goal.

Of course, there are a lot of variables that go into picking up a Dota team. What I can say to our Dota fans — and I know you're still out there — is that we are in the best position we've been in to recruit a Dota2 team worthy of the Liquid name.

Across all games, Liquid is better equipped than ever to attract new recruits and treat our players better. We're able to cater better to our sponsors, and are able to provide better conditions for our staff. By doing all of this, we place ourselves right among the largest esports teams in the world.

I've always aspired for Team Liquid to be an integral part of esports, and for it to continue to grow as esports develops. Now, those ambitions can come to fruition.


We've always had a motivated and skilled writing staff for League of Legends, but were never able to provide them with a standalone site -- until now. We’ve had a lot of internal discussions about the topic before, and there were several reasons we decided against it in the past, yet we never completely ruled out the possibility. Now that we have a highly regarded team in LCS, we find ourselves with the perfect opportunity to finally start a news and community website for League of legends.

We come to you with a brand new design for the LoL site, which takes the best parts of the traditional TeamLiquid.net layout, and streamlines it all into a new, more modern design.

We have an incredible staff for the new site, an amazing team consisting of lots of motivated writers, who will be headed by Chexx and Fionn.

Chexx has been a key part of TeamLiquid.net’s LoL section for some time now. Based in Seoul, South Korea, he's never stopped reporting breaking news from the mecca of esports. He's been an important source of LoL information and advice for me — which even led to some brief interest in acquiring Unicorns of Love last year. Chexx has done a lot for TeamLiquid-LoL, and I’m very happy he will be able to continue his work on LiquidLegends.net.

Of all the staff TL.net has had over the past 13 years, Fionn is one of the most talented writers we’ve had the pleasure of working with. After discovering us during our Brood War days, he became one of our marquee writers for StarCraft 2. His interest later shifted to League of Legends, and many of you will know him from his work on LoLesports.com. We're glad to have him back on board, and look forward to the quality articles he will put out with the rest of the writing staff.



As I mentioned, we're going forward together as Team Liquid. With Steve and I running it from the top, the rest of our staff have already started the process of working together. It's going very well so far, and we're already getting some great work done. The launch of our stand-alone LiquidLegends.net site is only a taste of what is to come.

I'm so thankful to everyone who contributed to getting us here. Team Liquid over the years has had hundreds upon hundreds of volunteers. When we covered BW for 10 years straight, nobody made a single dime -- it was all for the passion we had for that game. What we did in those years is what brought us the good name and reputation we have today, and I could not be more proud and grateful for that.

I want to thank our sponsors HyperX, Razer, Twitch NEEDforSEAT, and ShinyThings for their continued support of Liquid. I’d also like to welcome to G2A, Alienware, LoL-Class, Nissan, Quest Nutrition, and Lootcrate, who we look forward to representing going forward.

In particular, I want to give Razer my gratitude for being with us since the first day I went looking for sponsors for our professional team. Even before that, they were a part of our very first TSL tournament in 2008. We have grown so much together and I am so appreciative of everything you have done for us.

Finally, I want to say thank you to all our fans. Whether it was through good times or bad, for just a single tournament run or for our entire history, it's thanks to you that we are able to make this announcement today. I hope that in the future we will continue to be a team that you are proud to support.

Hey Guys,

I wanted to put together a short video to help share my thoughts about the merger between Curse eSports and Team Liquid. It was a pretty challenging time towards the end of 2014 with all the things that were happening: Voyboy leaving the team, finding a new mid laner, the expansion tournament, and of course, our announcement to rebrand for the 2015 season. After everything is set and done, however, I believe that teaming up with Victor and his amazing organization was the best decision that I could have made. There are many changes coming soon and you'll slowly start to see everything unfold in the days and weeks to come. I'm super excited for all the new things we have planned for Team Liquid and I hope you share my enthusiasm!

You all probably have a ton of questions. Hopefully my video helps clarify those things up for you!