The Valorant off-season has seen plenty of teams across the Valorant Champions Tour make significant changes to their rosters for next year.
Jaccob “Yay” Whitaker, also known as El Diablo, is noticeably absent from the rumor mill and off-season spreadsheets.
While the former OpTic Gaming star has yet to announce which team he will play for in the VCT 2024 season, new information indicates he is currently playing in the Pacific region.
Yay is rumored to have joined Singaporean team Bleed Esports
According to the viewers on Saibani “fl1pzjder” Rahmad’s YouTube stream on September 26, Yay was spotted playing ranked in Valorant’s Southeast Asian server. The former OpTic star, using the alias “zommy,” was playing in a duo with Bleed pro Derrick “Deryeon” Yee.
When fl1pzjder asked Deryeon who he was duoing with, the Singaporean pro simply said he was playing with his little brother, who did not say a single word throughout the game.
Viewers event went as far as to analyze zommy’s gameplay and pointed out how their mechanics resemble El Diablo’s aim and movement. Tarik “Tarik” Celik watched clips of zommy and immediately said, “Yeah, that’s Yay. That’s 100% him.”
In another ranked game, zommy finally used his voice comms and clearly sounded like the Yay.
Other clear indicators linking “zommy” to being Yay include their shared use of the same crosshair and their primary focus on playing duelists.
Valorant roster leakers have stayed tight-lipped on where El Diablo will play in the VCT 2024 season. Even Yay pointed out that he was “shocked” that nothing had leaked yet.
El Diablo was considered the best Valorant player in the world in 2022. He produced the best stats on OpTic Gaming when the team won Masters Reykjavik 2022.
As part of OpTic’s core, El Diabo had consecutive top-three finishes at Masters Copenhagen and Valorant Champions 2022.
Yay had a short stint playing for Cloud9 at the start of the VCT 2023 season, but he was released from the team after VCT LOCK//IN.
The last time we saw El Diablo play in a professional match was when he was part of Jeremy “Disguised Toast” Wang’s DSG team that played in the Valorant Challengers League.
After losing all seven VCL matches with DSG, yay left the team and became a free agent.
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