Carlos "ocelote" Rodriguez of G2 Esports.
Carlos "ocelote" Rodriguez of G2 Esports.
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G2 Esports CEO’s actions may have cost the company a Valorant franchise slot

  • Posted byby Dean Takahashi
  • Updated
  • 2 min

G2 Esports CEO Carlos Rodriguez agreed to take eight weeks of unpaid leave on Monday after he appeared in a video on Twitter celebrating a victory with banned influencer Andrew Tate.

That reportedly resulted in G2 losing a franchise slot in Riot Games’ Valorant esports league that was announced today. Riot Games revealed 30 teams in the Valorant International Leagues today, and G2 was not among them.

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Written by

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.