Two weeks after announcing the team would be trialing two new players ahead of the upcoming Dota Pro Circuit season, Virtus.pro has officially moved both Egor “Nightfall” Grigorenko and captain Vitalie “Save-” Melnic to the inactive roster.
The team will now replace both players, starting with the signing of 17-year-old carry prospect Ivan “Pure” Moskalenko. Nightfall and Save- were not originally mentioned directly as being replaced in the previous statement from VP, but both players showed signs of moving out of the roster following a meeting between all of the team’s players, their coach, and other VP management. This was used as a chance to discuss the team’s fifth-place finish at TI10 and plans for the future.
After that meeting, VP decided that the roster had some problems that needed to be fixed, and not all of them revolved solely around Dota. And after additional internal discussions, Nightfall, Save-, and VP came to the mutual decision to move in a different direction.
“Not everyone in the team was on the same page,” VP CEO Sergey Glamazda said. “Some players believed that we could not work out our issues and succeed in the current roster. Egor and Vitaly are highly skilled players and natural leaders. They were the founders of the VP.Prodigy roster that later became our main one. We’ve had our ups and downs in the last two years and I want to say thank you to the guys for this amazing journey we had together.”
In their search for replacement players, Pure was not initially on the top of VP’s list of options. But VP was impressed by his ninth-ranked position on the European leaderboard and his subsequent performance in the trials.
Glamazda noted that it was immediately obvious Pure showed high-level abilities and reaction, boasted an impressive hero pool, and had strong communication skills. All of this led to the team signing him, with hopes of helping him grow into a tier-one player.
Pure now slides into the roster alongside Danil “gpk” Skutin, Dmitry “DM” Dorokhin, and Illias “Kingslayer” Ganeev.
“I’m delighted to have a chance to play for Virtus.pro,” Pure said. “The guys here are highly skilled and easygoing. All players are good at what they do, our games are really fun to play. We are about to meet in person at the bootcamp and start training to show our best in the upcoming DPC season.”
VP will announce their new position four player to round out its new roster in the near future, while both Nightfall and Save- are likely to be pursued by other organizations. Several rumors have Nightfall joining Evil Geniuses’ new lineup, though it has not been confirmed by either team.
