North American pro Diondre “YaBoiDre” Bond has made it public today that he’s a restricted free agent in VALORANT and will no longer be a part of Luminosity Gaming’s active lineup.
YaBoiDre, a former PUBG pro, switched to Riot Games’ FPS in April 2020 and had been playing for Luminosity since February 2021, when the organization acquired him from beastcoast. Over the last seven months, he became one of the best players on the squad but wasn’t able to help them qualify for VCT Masters international events or VALORANT Champions. His departure, in fact, comes a week after the VCT North American Last Chance Qualifier ended, where Luminosity earned a top-eight finish.
The 21-year-old made it clear on Twitter that this was a mutual decision between him and the team, and he wasn’t moved to the bench. YaBoiDre wants to play flex or support moving forward after spending the last 90 days playing officials mostly as Jett and Raze, according to VLR.gg’s statistics.
With YaBoiDre’s departure, Luminosity’s lineup has been depleted to Alex “aproto” Protopapas, Kaleb “moose” Jayne, Will “dazzLe” Loafman, and Tanner “TiGG” Spanu. Luminosity will be one of several VALORANT teams looking to rebuild in 2022 now that there are no more VCT events taking place in the near future.
Luminosity don’t have any events scheduled for the foreseeable future, so the organization has time to run tryouts for YaBoiDre’s replacement.
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