The enterprising streamer Ludwig Ahgren has it in his head to have his own team in Riot’s shooter Valorant. For $500,000 (€470,000), the 27-year-old put together a team: “MoistMogul”. But when the team started, it wasn’t as exciting as a Twitch clip shows.
Who did you buy there? Ludwig along with his new business partner Charles “MoistCr1TiKal” White bought the team “BreakThru” and renamed it “Moist Moguls”. “Mogul” is a brand name Ludwig likes to use on YouTube. “Moist Esports” is the company he has now joined as a co-owner.
The team consists of 5 players:
The team was rated as “has potential” and is made up of former players from Ghost Gaming and FaZe Clan. Ludwig joked he spent €500,000 on his partner’s team. But nobody should tell him that (via twitter).
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$500,000 investment during “eSports Winter”
Why is that so weird? This investment in an esports team comes at a time when esports is in crisis. One speaks of the “e-sports winter”.
Teams and companies file for bankruptcy in 2023, scenes break up, many employees in e-sports are laid off overnight, money is missing everywhere.
“The Guard” was an e-sports company in LA that wanted to make it big.
It was only in the last few weeks that the end of “Beyond the Summit” and “The Guard” became known, actually established organizations that were no longer able to survive in the difficult climate of 2023 (via venturebeat).
Some see the failure of Blizzard’s “Overwatch League” as one reason why a lot of money is being withdrawn from e-sports. The fact that Overwatch can no longer be played in China has given the league another push.
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Esports is dying, teams are too expensive – But Ludwig enjoys burning money
How does Ludwig see it? Ludwig then also says that he is looking forward to losing money in e-sports. He is already aware that he is taking a high risk with the team because he could be eliminated from the league early on, which would not be so unlikely and would then have to wait a year.
Valorant is just hard (via win.gg).
In a Twitter clip, he explains that esports teams are overpriced because they’re cross-financed, but he has enough money to burn it – it’s fun and kind of addictive.
Ludwig watches his team for 2 hours – suffers agony
How was the first game now? In a live stream, Ludwig watched his team’s first match against the weakest team in a tournament, “Turtle Troop” (via youtube).
The streamer suffers for more than 2 hours and sees his team gradually losing. Viewers keep commenting on this by writing “500k” in the chat – a nod to how much money the team costs and how bad they look now.
After a while, the speakers in the chat really went against the grain. It’s like stepping on someone who is already on the ground.
From this longer YouTube video, a twitch clip is currently circulating as Valorant crack Tarik watches the owner Ludwig suffer in the game.
Ludwig looks deranged in the video, yells “It’s about faith!”, nibbles on his fingers. Tarik and his viewers have a lot of fun with it.
In other scenes, Ludwig invokes higher powers, rejoices in winning a round, only to endure agony seconds later when something goes wrong again.
It doesn’t look like he’s having much fun burning his cash in esports.
In general, a crisis seems to be breaking out in gaming that is affecting many companies:
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