Cloud9 sign the other Perkz, a school teacher from Leicester also known as Emily Perkins

What is probably the most wholesome case of mistaken identity in League of Legends has taken another surprising turn this week.

Emily Perkins (aka Perkz), a school teacher based in Leicester in the UK, who shares an online name with Cloud9 pro League of Legends player Luka ‘Perkz’ Perković, has joined the organisation.

More specifically, she’s joined the Cloud9 family on the content side and has already started producing videos.

Perkz (the teacher) today interviewed the father and brother of Cloud9 support player Philippe ‘Vulcan’ Laflamme on the Cloud9 Twitch channel, and featured in this social video with Perkz (the pro player) talking about Cloud9’s slogan #PlayTogether.

She’s also been featuring people in the community on her blog, LeicesterLadyPerkz.

Oh, and one of Emily Perkins’ guinea pigs is called Fudge, sharing a name with Cloud9 mid-laner Ibrahim ‘Fudge’ Allami. She and her guinea pigs (the others being called Caramel and Badger) have since been immortalised in this Cloud9 art.

Here’s the announcement video of her joining the Cloud9 family:

Emily Perkins (@Perkz) was first mistakenly tagged on Twitter earlier this year, by people believing they were tagging @C9Perkz the pro player, and after an interview with journalist Travis Gafford, she quickly rose to fame in the community.

“I was accidentally tagged in a tweet by someone, I got tagged a few times and started to get annoyed as I wanted to get on with my day,” Perkz explained.

“Travis Gafford picked up on it and retweeted it and I suddenly got 14 followers in an hour just before bed. I thought, ‘this is a bit strange’.

“My husband showed me Dom’s [Cloud9 streamer IWillDominate’s] Twitch feed and I had a warm response from it. I got super excited and I stayed up for an extra two hours to watch what was happening. Dom and Caedrel picked up that I was fundraising for charity and they both donated $500 live on screen.

“I got a few thousand followers in an hour. At the time Cloud9 were playing and were 2-0 down, but they came back and won two games, and people were saying ‘it’s because of Emily Perkins, she’s our lucky charm!’

“I started to watch some games and play some games. I had one game where another character stuck to my back the whole time [Yuumi] and it was annoying. I got a lot of followers after tweeting about that!”

In Cloud9’s YouTube video titled ‘C9 signs Two Perkz for $11.75 Million ??‘, Emily Perkins commented: “I would just like to point out I have received zero millions !!! ????????”

Esports News UK understands Emily is being paid by Cloud9 for her work, but she is not employed by them as such, and of course not full-time.

Emily Perkins also made national year earlier this year, with the headline: ‘Gamers back teacher’s charity appeal after identity mix-up’

She’s also been asking about League of Legends and Twitch.

Who knows what the future holds for Cloud9’s second Perkz? If her journey so far is anything to go by, the sky’s the limit, but for now it seems like she’s on her own cloud nine.

Dom Sacco

Dom is an award-winning writer and finalist of the Esports Journalist of the Year 2023 award. He graduated from Bournemouth University with a 2:1 degree in Multi-Media Journalism in 2007.

As a long-time gamer having first picked up the NES controller in the late ’80s, he has written for a range of publications including GamesTM, Nintendo Official Magazine, industry publication MCV and others. He worked as head of content for the British Esports Federation up until February 2021, when he stepped back to work full-time on Esports News UK and offer esports consultancy and freelance services. Note: Dom still produces the British Esports newsletter on a freelance basis, so our coverage of British Esports is always kept simple – usually just covering the occasional press release – because of this conflict of interest.