To read about the other nominees, head to the bottom of the article.
No organization has ever had a year quite like Cloud9. There will be teams that can be pointed at as having more dominant single years in their respective games, but as a whole, no one can match what the blue and white of C9 brought to the table in 2018. In what was a year of growth throughout the esports world with the rise of new games like Fortnite and the establishment of the inaugural Overwatch League season, there was one team at the ahead of it all: Cloud9.
The golden year all began back in Boston during the last week of January. Cloud9's Counter-Strike: Global Offensive team was playing in the ELEAGUE Major. The all-American team expected to do decently at the event and fought its way through the opening round without a loss before entering the dangerous waters of the single-elimination knockout bracket. After a relatively easy series with the French squad from G2 Esports, C9 toppled the Brazilians of SK Gaming to make it ways to the final. There, they met the European superteam FaZe Clan, the heavy favorite to lift the championship.
Over 1,000,000 people on a single Twitch stream watched the theatrics as C9 bested FaZe in what would come to be one of the best esports matches of the entire year. After dropping the first match in the best-of-three, C9 clawed its way back to even before taking the third set into overtime and prevailing in dramatic fashion. Jack Etienne rushed the stage, tears were shed, and an emotional interview was conducted with the hometown crowd ushering in the first North American Major championship in CS:GO history.
By itself, that one victory would be good enough for most teams to be in the running for team of the year.
For C9, they were just getting started.
Overwatch League was a marquee moment in the history of esports. Teams invested millions upon millions of dollars to acquire a franchise in the competition put on by Blizzard. Cloud9, backed by investors, entered the fray, becoming the only team to grab a city in the European market, creating the London Spitfire. It was a North American organization with a franchise in Europe that was made up of all South Korean players.
It was a crazy gambit, but like C9's other unorthodox ventures, it paid off in spades. London established itself quickly as one of the strongest teams in the Overwatch League. Etienne and the staff at C9 believed that the fastest way to building a fan base was winning, regardless of where the players were from, and he was proven correct. London's wins created a fan base not only in Europe but in Los Angeles where the live games were held, and the multicultural feel of the team paid dividends. No matter if you were South Korean, European, or American, the London Spitfire was an aggressive, winning team.
The team struggled in the middle of the season in July, but when the league final was held in Brooklyn, the London Spitfire were there, ready to win another major championship for C9. The Philadelphia Fusion were their opponents, backed by an ownership group from Comcast. Newcomers to the esports scene, the Fusion owners had built a team worthy of competing in the final, overcoming their own pitfalls.. It wasn't enough, though. The Spitfire came out hot on the first day of the final and then swept the best-of-three series on the second day to become the first Overwatch League champions.
Fast forward a few months down the line, and Etienne is in the home country of his Overwatch players, South Korea, watching the team that started it all, League of Legends, make even more history. C9 came into the world championship as the third-seed in North America and almost fell in the qualifying rounds, needing all five games to defeat Gambit Esports from the Commonwealth of Independent States. They then began the group stages of the main tournament with a 1-2 record in the toughest round-of-sixteen group, looking all but done.
With little time to change things up, the C9 League of Legends team stopped worrying and began taking the fight to their opponents, brought on by the play of Team Vitality in the same group. C9's new brazen style led them to three-straight wins on the final day of the group stage, including a win over Vitality that punched the team's ticket to the knockout stage. In the quarterfinals, Cloud9 became the first North American team to make the semifinals in the modern era of the world championship, blanking South Korea's Afreeca Freecs in the most dominant performance ever by an NA team at the biggest League of Legends event of the year.
Although the team failed to make the final, it was still a milestone for the League of Legends team that began the C9 dynasty of success in 2013 when the team won a domestic title in its very first season in the North American LCS.
Rainbow 6 Siege. PUBG. Rocket League. The list goes on and on.
I can sit here naming every accomplishment C9 made in 2018, but they'll win another tournament or gain another big-time investor before we're done talking about them.
Team of the year. Franchise of the year. Organization of the year.
No matter the verbiage, there's one clear fact: In 2018, everything came up Cloud9.
--Tyler Erzberger
The nominees
Astralis
In 2018, Astralis made their case for being the greatest Counter-Strike: Global Offensive lineup of all time. Though things looked bleak after the Danes were eliminated 1-3 from the Boston Major group stage despite being a favorite, early tribulations proved fruitful for them, as the failure sparked a roster change that turned the scene upside down. With the addition of Emil "Magisk" Reif, the roster found quick success, winning Dreamhack Marseille in dominant fashion along with more than a half dozen LAN tournaments over the year, including the FACEIT Major. Even more impressive, Astralis' success did not come from individual player talent, but radical innovation in utility usage and strategic play. And capping off its year with an ESL Pro League and first-ever Grand Slam title, it's safe to say that professional Counter-Strike has been permanently changed by Astralis' excellence.
--Sam Delorme
Team Liquid
After a hot 2017, Team Liquid followed its organizational success throughout the 2018 calendar year. Their League of Legends team won both North American League of Legends Championship Series split titles, and their Quake duo -- Shane "rapha" Hendrixson and Tim "DaHanG" Fogarty -- took a total of five championships, including at QuakeCon, cementing themselves as the best in that game.
Liquid also found high-level success in other games: its Counter-Strike: Global Offensive team placed as runner-ups behind the dominant Astralis on a number of occasions; their Dota 2 team finished fourth at The International 8, as well as first at the China Dota 2 Supermajor; Grzegorz "MaNa" Komincz finished second at the StarCraft II World Championship Series Austin leg in June; Frank "Fr0zen" Zhang took second at the Hearthstone World Championship in January; their Rainbow Six: Siege team finished first at ESL Pro League; and their individual fighting game players, Juan "Hungrybox" DeBiedma and Naoki "Nemo" Nemoto, found continued success in Super Smash Bros. Melee and Street Fighter V respectively. It's clear that Liquid had yet another great year in esports history.
--Jacob Wolf
Invictus Gaming
Historically, Invictus Gaming has often been known in the international esports community for DotA2 over League of Legends. All prior iG attempts at LoL Pro League or worlds titles ended in early disappointments. This year seemed to be par for the course for iG LoL after two first-place regular-season finishes ended in losing to RNG both splits. Yet, LoL team took center stage for iG this year, winning China its first-ever LoL Worlds title in a dominating 3-0 sweep of Fnatic. They did it not only through their monstrous solo laners Kang "TheShy" Seung-lok and Song "Rookie" Eui-jin, but through surprisingly excellent showings from Worlds MVP jungler Gao "Ning" Zhen-Ning and Yu "JackeyLove" Wen-bo. This team has a lot of young talent that has potential to grow even stronger over the next few years. If Ning and support Wang "Baolan" Liu-Yi's recent re-signings are anything to go by, iG plans on keeping this team together for as long as possible for continued success.
--Emily Rand
FNATIC
When compared to legends of years and teams past, this has been a down year for Fnatic Counter-Strike: Global Offensive -- although in fairness, iterations of Fnatic CS:GO have been unequivocally best in the world. Fnatic's inclusion on this list is largely thanks to their League of Legends team, which once again won both European League of Legends Championship series splits and represented Europe at the Mid-Season Invitational and worlds. Despite what appeared to be a meta-shift completely out of their favor, Fnatic persevered through the flexibility of top laner Paul "sOAZ" Boyer and top-sometimes-bot laner Gabriël "Bwipo" Rau. Ultimately, this led to a worlds finals appearance, and although they lost to Invictus Gaming, a strong year in competitive LoL.
--Emily Rand
Royal Never Give Up
With the team's shocking defeat to G2 Esports at the 2018 LoL World Championship, Royal Never Give Up's banner year in League of Legends was forgotten. Here's a reminder: RNG had a spectacular year of LoL prior to Worlds that included two LoL Pro League titles and the Mid-Season Invitational title. Four out of the five starting members on Team China -- Yan "LetMe" Jun-Ze, Liu "Mlxg" Shi-Yu, Jian "Uzi" Zi-Hao, and Shi "Ming" Sen-Ming -- were from RNG and part of the championship-winning Asian Games lineup that took down Team South Korea in the finals. This was supposed to be RNG's year, until it wasn't and iG carried the banner of Chinese LoL to the Summoners' Cup stage instead. Worlds means a lot in competitive LoL, but RNG's quarterfinals loss isn't enough to erase the successes they had throughout the entirety of 2018.
--Emily Rand