BLAST and ESL to recognize Virtus.Pro

A statement published this morning by Virtus.pro announced that BLAST and ESL FACEIT will begin to recognize the organization and allow the players to represent the brand once more, nearly a year after prohibiting them due to the Russian War in Ukraine.

At the time, BLAST and ESL FACEIT had actually prohibited both Gambit and Virtus.pro players from playing under their organization's banners due to connections with US and EU sanctioned individuals following the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Gambit's team decided to adopt the short-lived "Players" moniker while Virtus.pro players would participate in events as "Outsiders". Gambit's team was eventually acquired by Cloud9 through third-party Ulti Agency and be able to represent the brand as Cloud9 had no attachment to sanctioned individuals.

Virtus.pro's ownership recently changed this week as VK Group, which has extensive ties to the Russian government, revealed by escorenews in the company's financial report for 2022, that it had sold Virtus.Pro to Aram Karamanukyan for 174 Million rubles ($2.9M USD). The company also noted that the deal only resulted in a profit of 13 million rubles, which translates to $217,000 USD at the time of sale.

The public announcement appears to be the catalyst in both BLAST and ESL FACEIT recognizing that Virtus.pro will be allowed to once again participate with their banner in upcoming events. For BLAST, Virtus.pro will be able to use their brand in events starting from today and for ESL, the Outsiders team will finish out ESL Pro League and will then be allowed to use their brand going forward.

According to Dexerto's Esports Editor Luis Mira, ESL will not retroactively change the banner for the IEM Rio Major 2022 winners Outsiders to Virtus.pro. In a statement they said:

The IEM Rio CS:GO Major, as well as ESL Challenger Rotterdam, was won by Outsiders, and we congratulate the players on their achievements.

It remains to be seen if other tournament organizers might retroactively change the results to rename all actions taken by Outsiders to go under "Virtus.pro", but for now it appears that the separation will remain in the history books.