KUALA LUMPUR — Youth and Sports Minister Hannah Yeoh congratulated Ahmad Khalish ‘d4v41’ Rusyaidee Nordin following the runners-up finish with Singaporean e-sports team Paper Rex at the Valorant Champions tournament yesterday.
The Kelantan-born gamer competed at the tournament, held in Los Angeles, California as part of Paper Rex’s team made up of Indonesians Jason ‘f0rsakeN’ Susanto and Aaron ‘mindfreak’ Leonhart, Singapore’s Wang Jing ‘Jinggg’ Jie and Russia’s Ilya ‘something’ Petrov.
“I want to congratulate him, we have plenty of individuals who contact the ministry where the parents send their children to world championships and quite a number of them are showing off their talent.
“Because of that we want to see in what other ways we can help individuals like this, because for now there is no formula or policy to help these individuals, all (applications) have to be done through their respective sports associations,” she told a press conference at the National Sports Institute, in Bukit Jalil, here today.
On Saturday, Ahmad Khalish squared off with his Paper Rex teammates against North American team Evil Geniuses (EG) aiming to become only the second Malaysian to have won a major global-level e-sports tourney.
His team were the hot favourites going into the Grand Finals having gone through the tournament unbeaten before the championship game.
However, EG came out on top winning the best-of-five series 3-1.
For their second-place finish Paper Rex took home US$400,000 (RM1.8 million) in prize money.
With the defeat, Ahmad Khalish missed out on being the second Malaysian to win a world title in e-sports.
Hock Chuan ‘ChuaN’ Wong, remains the first and only Malaysian to win a world title in e-sports, representing Chinese team Invictus Gaming, winning the second edition of Defense of the Ancients 2’s (DotA2) The International in 2012.
The Valorant World Championship is the culmination of seven months of intense Valorant competition, which pits winners of each global region to battle each other to be crowned world champions.
Valorant is a competitive first-person tactical shooter video game released by Riot Games. — August 28, 2023