(Photo by Lance Skundrich/Riot Games)
UK Valorant player Travis ‘L1NK’ Mendoza has announced he is retiring from professional Valorant esports to focus on streaming.
The former Counter-Strike player, who moved to Valorant when the game launched back in early 2020, was a part of the old Fish123 roster that signed to Team Liquid.
He played alongside other UK players like Soulcas (who is now part of the Apeks 2024 Valorant roster, which won the UK/Nordics regional league Polaris earlier this year).
In CS, L1NK played with teams including CeX, Wind and Rain, London Esports, Vexed Gaming and more.
He was most recently with UCAM Esports Club, a team that reached the semi-finals of the recent Valorant Challengers Spain Rising Split 1.
L1NK said in an announcement video: “For me, this is something I’ve been thinking about for a long time. With being released from UCAM, I think it’s the right time for me to [retire].
“I just want to say thank you to all my previous teammates, obviously everyone from Team Liquid, Acend, LPB and UCAM, and to everyone that reached out to me.
“For my next step, I’m going to try full-time streaming. I will not be streaming any one particular game, I’m not gonna sit on Valorant or RuneScape 24/7. If I’m playing a game, you’re gonna see me playing it, whether that’s Valorant, RuneScape, WoW, Siege, whatever, GeoGuessr for God’s sake.
“I’m a full-time gamer and that’s what you’ll see from me [on stream]. Hopefully I’ll see people dropping by in my stream, and if not, thank you for the past four years.”
L1NK
L1NK went live on stream this evening playing Ghost of Tsushima, on his L1NK_ Twitch channel.
He added: “Amazing reading all the replies and talking to everyone that came into the stream today! A lot more to come. Big thank you to smooya for the gifted subs and the raid.
“Streams will be regularly starting 2pm CEST every day! Thank you so to everyone and I’m excited to start the journey!”
L1NK also said he is looking for someone to create screens, emotes, banners and assets like that for his stream.
The news comes a few days after another UK esports personality, Gregan, announced his retirement from full-time esports.
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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.
