tory on the invites Imperial Valkyries received in 2025: "I think it was undeserved"

Many CS2 fans questioned why Imperial Valkyries, the women's lineup of the Brazilian organization, were handed out invites to BLAST Bounty Season 1, IEM Katowice, and PGL Cluj-Napoca earlier this year. The team led by Viktoria "tory" Kazieva made it into the top 30 of the global Valve Regional Standings (VRS) at the beginning of the year thanks to the points they accrued in women-only events.

Now that Imperial Valkyries have fallen drastically in VRS after their performance in tier-one tournaments, tory took some time to reflect on whether or not they deserved those invites in the first place.

"To be honest, I also think it was undeserved," tory said in a Russian-language interview with Cyber.sports.ru.

"It’s only because of Valve’s new system, and we earned the points at female tournaments. But anyway, what can we do? We aren’t going to decline these invites. Games against those players are a very useful experience. We are now even practicing against top teams. Our last scrim was against Liquid. We never played against such rosters before."

tory also commented that the tier-one teams respected Imperial Valkyries in their matches. She mentioned that Natus Vincere, FURIA, and Eternal Fire played seriously and even anti-stratted them.

Imperial Valkyries are currently at 55th in the global VRS and are leading ESL Impact League Season 7 Europe.