In a new VCT EMEA update, Riot Games has terminated KOI's Valorant partnership as of September 6, 2025. The official announcement came via the Valorant Esports EMEA X page, alerting fans of KOI's partnership termination because of a breach in their contract with the EMEA league. According to the announcement, all the players of the team will now be free agents.This article will explain why Movistar KOI was released from its VCT EMEA Valorant partnership with Riot Games and shed some light on the announcement.VCT EMEA: Movistar KOI released from partnership after contractual breachFollowing Riot Games' announcement regarding Movistar KOI's removal from the VCT EMEA league, the club's co-founder, Ibai “Ibai” Llanos, appeared in a 10-minute video explaining how things unfolded days before the announcement.According to him, the club was contacted by Riot Games via an email calling for an urgent meeting, where it was revealed to them that KOI would be released from their partnership contract due to a breach. The question remains: what was the breach? In the video, Ibai explained the following:"We have fallen short in the content department, we have fallen short of the skin sales, in fact, we were the last ones this year. Last year, we did sell a lot of skins, so thank you guys for the support. We ended up in the fourth or fifth place, even if the team wasn't performing at all. Lastly, from a competitive standpoint, our performance has been poor."Essentially, poor skin sales in 2025 and a severe lack of content, combined with KOI's performance at VCT EMEA, led to them being removed from the league. These are the reasons cited by Ibai as he discussed the ending of their partnership with Riot Games.Ibai Llanos' thoughts about KOI's partnership ending with Riot GamesIn the video, Ibai Llanos remained critical of the club he co-founded. He reasoned that KOI's performance has been rather poor, and for all the valid points Riot cited for the contract breach, KOI has to be self-critical.The roster has underperformed at several regional tournaments now. At VCT EMEA Stage 2, Movistar KOI won only one match against Apeks and lost four to different teams. Moreover, between EMEA Kickoff 2025 and Stage 1 earlier this year, KOI collected a losing streak of six matches.Their performance in 2025 has been much worse than in 2024 at EMEA Stage 1, and even back then, the team performed poorly. Ibai Llanos was quite accepting of the club's issues and shortcomings. However, he also believed that Riot Games could have handled the situation better, as the termination of the partnership was quite sudden.Riot Games did not notify KOI of such a massive move a few months or even days before the termination. They simply released a mail and in an urgent meeting shortly after, revealed to the club that the contract would be terminated. According to Llanos, this leaves much to be desired from Riot Games and their conduct.