Patiphan Leaves Valorant to Return to Overwatch’s Gladiators

The Los Angeles Gladiator’s new signing, Patiphan ‘Patiphan’ Chaiwong recently made known his intentions to leave Valorant and return to his roots in the Overwatch League by joining the L.A based team. This move came as a result of Patiphan realizing that his venture into Valorant was only a short stop. Now he has to go on to the Overwatch League to further his Esports career. Patiphan had initially begun his journey in Overwatch in 2020.

This had been two years after he accelerated to stardom after playing for his country in the Bangkok qualifier for the Overwatch World Cup. But at the time he was too young to enter the Overwatch League as the minimum age for gaining a contract with the team is 18 years. The Thai phenomenon had moved to compete in Valorant and try at gaining the Riot Games’ FPS title. At the VALORANT, he played for Southeast Asian team X10 Crit, who were very successful in international play and dominated the SEA region.

Opportunities and winnings

Patiphan’s team had also been responsible for overthrowing North America’s Envy, a team that was widely thought to at least emerge as one of the winning groups at the previous VCT Champions event. X10 Crit were able to beat one of the elite NIA teams but they ended up losing to Masters Berlin winners Gambit Esport.

He participated in two international events with X10 Crit including the Valorant Champions and the VCT Stage 2 Masters. Patiphan was regarded as an international sensation on and off the server following his phenomenal walkouts in Reykjavik drawing alongside his crazy plays in the game. During the Valorant Champions he also connected with Fnatic’s Jake ‘Boaster’ Howlett, calling it ‘love at first sight’.

Before long, Patiphan became one of the best Valorant players in Asia, although his journey wasn’t a smooth sail. In July, he had stepped down from X10 because of a wrist injury. But he returned to active play months later, just in time for the Valorant Champions.

Returning to Overwatch

Now Patiphan is finally 18 years old. He has decided to sign with the Gladiators for the 2022 season, which would be played on the early edition of the Overwatch 2.

According to his interview with Dexerto, Patiphan confirmed that Overwatch would provide more opportunities to compete outside of Southeast Asia. It is one of his dreams to get to live and play in America, something he couldn’t find anywhere else. Patiphan further stated that Southeast Asia isn’t as competitive as other regions but had he been able to play in other regions, he would have considered sticking to Valorant.

When traveling to Berlin for Valorant Champions, Patiphan knew it was the last time he was playing with them as he was already in agreement to transition to the Los Angeles Gladiators and now, he had finally gotten his dream of playing in the Overwatch League.

As said earlier, the next season of the OWL is set for April on an early build of Overwatch 2. Once the league resumes, Patiphan will compete with the Gladiators team which equally has the support of hitscan Lee ‘ANS’ Seon-chan and Daniel ‘FunnyAstro’ Hathaway.

Fans of Overwatch are eager to watch Patiphan again in a few months. It’s also a great thing that Patiphan has some months to train as he’s got a lot of catching up to do. However, he equally stated that he is confident he would deliver an exciting play at the next Overwatch League.

Patiphan recently posted a video on Twitter that confirmed his intentions. The video shows the player exiting Valorant to the desktop before the screen goes black.

Within the release of the video and time of publication, there have been over 315,000 views with over 18,000 likes which depicts how well-liked Patiphan is across Southeast Asia. Overwatch is also happy to have him back and has recently confirmed the move in a tweet. His departure from X10 will leave a huge void in the Southeast Asia scene but there’s no doubt the move is a gorgeous one as he climbs up the ladders of success.