{"id":19605,"date":"2022-04-13T12:13:26","date_gmt":"2022-04-13T16:13:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/esportbet.com\/?p=19605"},"modified":"2022-04-13T12:13:26","modified_gmt":"2022-04-13T16:13:26","slug":"100-thieves-superstar-announces-retirement-from-professional-valorant","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/esportbet.com\/100-thieves-superstar-announces-retirement-from-professional-valorant\/","title":{"rendered":"100 Thieves superstar announces retirement from professional Valorant"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>100 Thieves captain Spencer &#8220;Hiko&#8221; Martin has officially announced his retirement from professional Valorant after a 14-year career. He has been a crucial part of the organization since its inception but has decided to take a step back and relieve himself of all the pressure of competing.<\/p>\n<p>The announcement was made through a video uploaded by the 100 Thieves official page on Twitter. In the six-minute video, they compiled his journey so far with the team, his official announcement, and what he plans to do next.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Hey guys, it&#8217;s Hiko here, and today, I am announcing my retirement from professional Valorant.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;When I first started playing <a href=\"https:\/\/esportbet.com\/valorant\/\" title=\"Valorant betting guide\" >Valorant<\/a>, I wasn&#8217;t really sure if I wanted to remain a streamer or actually go pro in Valorant and try to play competitive Valorant. When I did make the decision that I wanted to though, there were a lot of organizations that had reached out to me to possibly make a team for them. And, it seems like pretty much since Day 1, my vision aligned with 100 Thieves.&#8221;<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">A special message from the captain of clutch, <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/Hiko?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">@Hiko<\/a>. <\/p>\n<p>While today marks the end of Spencer&#39;s professional VALORANT career, he is excited to share details about his new journey here <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/100Thieves?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">@100Thieves<\/a>. <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/Ideeb7MHTR\">pic.twitter.com\/Ideeb7MHTR<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; 100 Thieves Esports (@100T_Esports) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/100T_Esports\/status\/1513955161458327553?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">April 12, 2022<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p> <script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>In reply to the video that was shared by 100 Thieves on Twitter, Hiko talked about how grateful he is for his fans and expressed his love for 100 Thieves.<br \/>\n&#8220;Thank YOU for being a part of my 14-year journey. I cannot express how grateful I am for my fans, my Twitch community, and 100 Thieves. LOVE YOU ALL!!!&#8221;<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Thank YOU for being a part of my 14-year journey. I cannot express how grateful I am for my fans, my Twitch community, and 100 Thieves. LOVE YOU ALL!!! <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/EeQpjh3jgp\">https:\/\/t.co\/EeQpjh3jgp<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; 100T Hiko (@Hiko) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/Hiko\/status\/1513956513781620753?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">April 12, 2022<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p> <script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>Hiko was one of the players that set the tone for how Valorant would be perceived in North America and the world. He led his team to a championship victory barely six months after their formation, becoming the first-ever team to be crowned champions of Valorant First Strike in North America.<\/p>\n<h2>Brief history about Hiko<\/h2>\n<p>Although Hiko entered the Valorant scene by forming the 100 Thieves&#8217; Valorant team in June 2020 as the game launched, he has been in the <a href=\"https:\/\/esportbet.com\/games\/\" title=\"Top Esport games For 2022\" >esports<\/a> industry for longer.<\/p>\n<p>The 32-year-old started his professional career in 2011 with Counter-Strike 1.6 playing for a team called Temporary. After an unsuccessful run with his new team CheckSix Gaming, he made the switch to Counter-Strike:Global Offensive as a member of Area 51 Gaming.<\/p>\n<p>Hiko rose to fame after finishing third at the 2012 <a href=\"https:\/\/esportbet.com\/counter-strike\/\" title=\"CS:GO Betting Guide\" >CS:GO<\/a> Electronic Sports World Cup. He has since been a big-name player in the scene, popular for his lurking and clutch ability. In 2020, the American chose to retire from CS:GO to pursue a career in Valorant. <\/p>\n<h2>Hiko remains an active member of 100 Thieves<\/h2>\n<p>While Hiko will no longer be a professional Valorant player, he revealed that he would remain with the 100 Thieves organization as a content creator. After announcing his retirement, he revealed his plans for the future.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;This decision was pretty bitter-sweet for me. I&#8217;m sure I&#8217;m going to miss competing, but I&#8217;m also super excited to announce that I will be continuing my content creation career under 100 Thieves.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Now that I&#8217;m going to be a full-time content creator, I&#8217;m excited to share that I will be also full-time streaming. Streaming has always been very important to me, and now that I&#8217;d have a lot more free time, I plan on dedicating all of my focus and all of my energy into streaming and creating unique and new content you guys have never seen me in before.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Competing for trophies in the professional Valorant space is no longer a possibility for Hiko. In his absence, it will be interesting to see what the team\u2019s odds will look like across several esports betting platforms.<\/p>\n<p>However, we have not seen the last of him as a player. Outside of the professional scene, he would continue to play and allow his fans to go on that new journey with him, mainly through Twitch.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/esportbet.com\/news\/\" class=\"contentLinkBtn\">More esports betting news<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>100 Thieves captain Spencer &#8220;Hiko&#8221; Martin has officially announced his retirement from professional Valorant after a 14-year career.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":25,"featured_media":19611,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ghostkit_customizer_options":"","ghostkit_custom_css":"","ghostkit_custom_js_head":"","ghostkit_custom_js_foot":"","ghostkit_typography":"","wds_primary_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[168,1345,4,1874,1150],"class_list":["post-19605","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-100-thieves","tag-cgo","tag-featured","tag-hiko","tag-valorant"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/esportbet.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19605"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/esportbet.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/esportbet.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esportbet.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/25"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esportbet.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19605"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/esportbet.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19605\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19610,"href":"https:\/\/esportbet.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19605\/revisions\/19610"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esportbet.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19611"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/esportbet.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19605"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esportbet.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19605"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esportbet.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19605"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}