Across the 2023-24 VALORANT offseason, Gen.G has been picking up some great Korean talent available in free agency to rebuild after a disappointing season. Now, after T1 picked up Gen.G’s Lee “k1Ng” Seung-won, Gen.G is picking up a player from T1.
Byeon “Munchkin” Sang-beom was officially acquired by Gen.G today, marking the team’s third signing of the offseason. After spending the start of his VALORANT career with Cloud9 Korea, he helped Crazy Raccoon reach international play and proved to be a great pickup for T1 when he joined partway through the 2022 season. With this move to Gen.G, he joins a different Pacific League team, connecting with some other highly-rated Korean talents as the fourth player on Gen.G’s 2024 roster.
Across the 2023 season, T1’s VALORANT team had a lot of talent on the roster broadly familiar with each other, and not even from the esport they were currently competing in. Munchkin joined former teammates Lee “Carpe” Jae-hyeok and Ha “Sayaplayer” Jung-woo as former Overwatch League hitscan players successfully making their moves to VALORANT esports. While Carpe was the newest in that line of VALORANT pros, Munchkin proved to be a great role player, playing mainly Killjoy and Skye to fit around the explosive talent of Sayaplayer.
Statistically, Munchkin was consistent and underrated. Across the Pacific League, among players who played a minimum of 40 rounds, Munchkin finished eighth in kill/death ratio at 1.15, ninth in clutch percentage at 20 percent (19 clutches out of 97 attempts), and 13th in average damage per round at 141.1, according to stats site VLR.gg.
Plus, while T1 struggled at international competitions, Munchkin was either the best or second-best player on the roster when he faced teams outside of the Pacific region. One of the notable highlights that showed off what he could do was against top NA team NRG at Masters Tokyo on June 12. As Killjoy on defense, he got an ace on Lotus in a map they ended up winning, surprising most who thought NRG would sweep them.
After T1 parted ways with him, it’s official that Munchkin is moving to Gen.G, reuniting with the organization he joined the Overwatch League with back in late 2017. Plus, the other signings alongside him include lots of high-potential talent, from Kim “Lakia” Jong-min to Kim “t3xture” Na-ra.
While Gen.G is still looking for a fifth player to complete its roster, Munchkin fills another needed role on the team. Now, all that’s left is to see which controller player joins the popular Pacific squad.
