Vitality marches on, Derke makes history at VCT Masters Bangkok

Superstar Duelist Derke made history in Team Vitality’s win against DRX by becoming the first player to earn 2,000 kills at global events, doing so while competing in his 10th global appearance.

Derke leads Vitality to Masters Bangkok playoffs

The former Fnatic man did so during a tight 13-10 map two loss on Abyss after his side had initially gone 1-0 up through a 13-8 win on Bind. Another close game in the third map eventually saw Vitality claim the series and become the first team to move on to the playoffs stage of the tournament.

Derke’s global career began way back at Masters Reykjavík in 2021, after which the Finn would qualify for the majority of global over the subsequent years. Now attending his 10th global competition at VCT Masters Bangkok, Derke also has a strong chance of adding a third global title to his trophy collection.

He was asked for his thoughts on the accomplishment as both teams spoke to the media following the series, quickly playing down its importance.

“It’s a cool milestone to get, to be the first player to do that. But honestly I think as a player you don’t really remember any of it that much. So for me, it’s like — just keep going forward.

“About just the progression over the years, I think I also qualified for the most events so it’s always easy because of that. I’m probably like top five in first deaths too or something. So for me, it’s kind of a cool milestone but don’t really care and also the role allows me to do this.”

Vitality’s squad has had notably positive energy so far in 2025, their comradery seen through in-game snippets of the players shown on broadcast as well as in media appearances. On how the vibes impact their performance, Kicks — VIT’s self-proclaimed vibe merchant — revealed that it affects the side in both directions.

“Being the certified vibe merchant of the team, I can say that, in my opinion, good vibes do help this team a lot. And when we play good, it’s because a lot of the time we have good vibes and when we’re struggling, it’s because everyone is a little down.

“When we bounced back on Split, everyone was hype again. I was screaming at the top of my lungs I heard Derke scream every round, and I feel like that has a big effect on this team. So I’m just going to make sure that I’ll be a vibe merchant for the rest of this team and hopefully I have a secure job spot.”

Remember to read up on how VCT Masters Bangkok got an oddly predictable start.

DRX still in contention

On DRX’s side, they became the first seed one team to lose a match in the tournament and will now need to win their next series to avoid elimination. They are still one of my VCT Masters Bangkok favorites despite the loss.

The series was not without positives, the tight nature of the loss shows that there is not a huge difference between them and Vitality’s supposed superteam. Head coach termi described his side as having played “pretty well” when asked to touch on the issues faced against Vitality.

“I think when it comes to the players on Vitality, they have a lot of experience. They also have veterans on the team, so they were able to execute and run their macro a lot more calmly. And I think they really used the map to its full potential. 

“But for us, from our perspective, we lost today, but I think we played pretty well. So we’re just going to improve and make our game stronger and hopefully that shows in the next match.”

That improvement may well lead to more composition changes, something DRX has been noticed for in their opening two matches. Termi highlighted other teams’ assumed reads on DRX — who won Pacific with a 100% winrate on Abyss — as the trigger that caused them to look for some tweaks.

“Even though we won Pacific Kickoff with 100% win rate on Abyss, I was pretty sure that other teams coming into Masters Bangkok would already prepare themselves for our Abyss and come up with ways to counter us. So I thought without change there would be no win and that is why we implemented the comp change on Abyss. And of course, there are good aspects and bad aspects of the things that we need to work on when we look at our Abyss game, but I think a lot came down to the changes that we made with our comp and Abyss that allowed us to take the map.”