Fans mourn after Golden Guardians deletes almost all social media accounts

After many years of blood, sweat, and tears in the esports scene, Golden Guardians has said farewell to the professional gaming industry—and much to the chagrin of fans, so has the team’s social media accounts.

On Dec. 21, former Golden Guardians social media coordinator Reba Robinson discovered that the team had deactivated its main Twitter and Instagram accounts. As a result, the org has deleted years of memories from its legacy and time in the competitive League of Legends and Smash Bros. scene, along with all of the other endeavors the team powered through over the last six years.

(From left to right) Huhi, Stixxay, Licorice, Gori, and River smile at a medal ceremony. Huhi is standing next to someone dressed as Amumu, and Gori and River are holding the numbers one and zero to commemorate the team's tenth win. — _{The members of Golden Guardians smile on a podium after achieving 10 wins in the 2023 Summer Split. Photo by Colin Young-Wolff/Riot Games via Flickr}

The organization’s merchandise website has also been deactivated, and the team’s page on LinkedIn is now currently unclaimed. In fact, the only traces of Golden Guardians that can be readily found on the internet is the team’s official website, which still only features a goodbye message to fans.

The team’s YouTube channel is also still active with 12,000 subscribers, while the team’s Discord server is still running but seems to be relatively inactive. Overall, the entire existence of Golden Guardians is slowly being purged, but some aspects of their time in esports may remain.

“I cannot imagine being someone who worked for the Golden Guardians in the content, graphics, or socials departments and is trying to collect your work to use for future job applications in the same area,” Cloud9’s senior social media manager Mateus Portilho said. “It’s just so sad… How are you gonna prove that you did the work?”

Other community members, like 100 Thieves’ social media manager Alex Poehlman, lamented all of the history that was removed with a single click, saying that “nuking all of that history, from wins to memes to announcements, is sad.”

Golden Guardians’ abrupt departure from the esports scene stemmed from the org’s decision to leave the LCS along with Evil Geniuses after the league shifted to eight teams for the first time in history. It was a move that shocked the North American League community and has now left fans wondering how 2024 will go with so many different changes in store for the new year.