As if there wasn’t enough smoke coming out of Virtus.pro’s camp, Dmitry “DM” Dorokhin has added more fuel to the concealed fire—stating there is no way the current iteration of the team can keep going after a recent move.
According to the off-laner, VP’s current lineup has no direction without former position one player RAMZES666. And, while the org did just sign a new head for the Dota 2 division, manager, and coach, that doesn’t appear to have provided a sense of stability yet.
“How do I go on without Roman?” DM said. “I don’t know, no way, no way at all without Roma. We’ll see what will happen.”
By all accounts, RAMZES and VP agreed to mutually part ways after the veteran carry returned to the org when they needed to fill a hole in its roster back in April.
That need came from VP very suddenly cutting ties with Pure following his controversial actions during a Valve-sanctioned event. And, while the team did stabilize and perform well with RAMZES, they just missed out on qualifying for The International 2022 on multiple occasions.
Once RAMZES vacated the roster, rumors of a full disbandment started circulating. This would see VP release the remaining active and inactive players to begin rebuilding from scratch for the first time since April 2020. But, the organization was quick to put those rumors to rest—at least on the surface.
VP openly denied the reports that pointed to its Dota division disbanding, along with other reports that stated the team had put a $1 million buyout price on former captain Save-’s inactive contract. But, while the reports were shut down, VP did not deny it was looking at extreme options to rebuild the team.
DM’s new statement doesn’t necessarily mean much, but this is now the second player from VP’s active roster who has spoken out about being unsure of how the team will keep going in its current state.
RAMZES wasn’t the linchpin holding things together, but the sequence of events that led to him joining the team and everything that happened this season may have poisoned the well for this iteration of VP.
The post-TI11 roster shuffle is already firing on all cylinders, with Evil Geniuses reportedly looking to dump its entire roster and move to South America while multiple players from other regions are looking to make moves to Western Europe.
VP will at least need to add one player to complete any roster, but with all of these rumors, it feels like next time fans see VP compete it will be with a majority new lineup.
