December 2025 MOBA competitive digest

Three residency qualifiers crowned three unbeaten winners on 13 December, and a day later the month’s richest open field went to a roster that had taken just $22,000 out of its own qualifier.

The month

December closed the MOBA year with 128 completed competitions in this month’s evidence set, $18,002,000 of listed prize money and 128 rosters that logged 41,679 competition appearances, 3,709 championships and $58,154,471 in winnings between them. Underneath that volume the calendar had a plain skeleton: one open worldwide event, three residency-gated qualifiers that fed it, twelve weekly league rounds split evenly across three regions, and 112 invitational events on the daily ladder.

The skeleton matters because it paid in two currencies that never mixed. The open event, its three qualifiers and all twelve league rounds were worth $6,613,000 between them, and not one of those sixteen competitions awarded a single competition point. Every point claimed inside the evidence set came from the 112 daily invitationals, worth $11,389,000. Eligibility for those daily events was set by residency, while the points they paid were booked to a regional points circuit; the two happened to line up this month, but they remain separate things, and a roster could lead December on cash without touching the points ladder at all.

The month turned across two days in the middle of it. On 13 December the three qualifiers ran and all three produced an unbeaten winner: MEM | 404 went 8-0 through a thirty-roster field in MOBA Masters 10 EMEA Qualifier, PHI -Fugitive Gaming- VAL went 7-0 in MOBA Masters 10 APAC Qualifier and 🇧🇷 Potiguar GEOgraphic 🌎 went 7-0 in MOBA Masters 10 AMER Qualifier. Each banked $100,000. The next morning, MOBA Masters 10 put sixteen rosters and $692,000 on the table and none of those three came close. PHI | Orangutan Ganji, which had taken $22,000 out of the same Asia/Pacific qualifier a day earlier, went 7-0 and left with $300,000. VAL | Ascendant 🪽, joint third by prize money in the European qualifier, went 6-1 for $180,000. The three unbeaten qualifier winners collected $108,000, $65,000 and $39,000 respectively.

That result is the clearest statement December made: qualifying form and open-field form were only loosely related, and a single afternoon paid more than a fortnight of accumulation. It also explains why the month’s cash table looks the way it does. MEM | 404 finished on top at $1,943,125 from 547 appearances and a 326-121 record. Tsimbidii finished $24,925 behind at $1,918,200, with more championships (90 against 59), a far better win rate (477-80, or 85.6 percent) and more appearances (624), yet without a single league round win and with only $39,000 from the open event. Roughly 78 percent of the first roster’s month came from the 128 competitions catalogued here; barely 54 percent of the second’s did. Same neighbourhood on the money list, completely different months.

The third thread ran through the daily circuits, and it is a story of handovers rather than dominance. In all three regions the roster that owned the first half of the month did not own the last week, and in all three regions the fourth and final league round went to a roster that had not won any of the first three. Whatever December rewarded, it was not holding a lead.

Competitions and leagues

MOBA Masters 10 was the fulcrum. Sixteen rosters, two stages, $692,000, and the whole thing resolved inside a single day on 14 December. PHI | Orangutan Ganji won it without dropping a match, and its wider month makes the run stranger rather than more explicable: five appearances in this evidence set, 195 competition appearances in total, a 118-13 record and $670,276 in winnings, of which $603,000 came from those five listed events. It is the leanest schedule of any roster near the top of the month, and it had already taken MOBA APAC League S6.1 on 1 December at 5-1 for $200,000.

The qualifiers underneath it were graded by field size rather than prestige. MOBA Masters 10 EMEA Qualifier carried $239,000 across thirty rosters, while MOBA Masters 10 APAC Qualifier and MOBA Masters 10 AMER Qualifier carried $231,000 across sixteen each, so the European route was materially harder to convert. None of the three paid competition points, which is worth holding onto: the entire qualifying path to the month’s richest event was invisible to the points ladder.

The twelve league rounds were the most reliable money in December, $435,000 apiece across eight-roster fields, running on the 1st, 8th, 15th and 22nd in each region. In Europe, the Middle East and Africa, MEM | 404 won the first three, opening 11-0 in MOBA EMEA League S6.1 before taking MOBA EMEA League S6.2 at 7-3 and MOBA EMEA League S6.3 at 7-4, then finished MOBA EMEA League S6.4 in the bottom payout band at 4-4 while Fabulous took it 7-1. In the Americas, Yellow Sub won MOBA AMER League S6.1 on a scruffy 6-5, then 🇧🇷 Potiguar GEOgraphic 🌎 produced the two cleanest league runs of the month, 8-0 in MOBA AMER League S6.2 and 12-0 in MOBA AMER League S6.3, before AVNG | 🇧🇷 VilaMaria SCCP closed the season out 7-1 in MOBA AMER League S6.4. Asia/Pacific followed the same arc: PHI | Orangutan Ganji opened, PHI -Fugitive Gaming- VAL won MOBA APAC League S6.2 at 10-1 and MOBA APAC League S6.3 at 9-0, and then finished MOBA APAC League S6.4 at 2-5 in the bottom band while PHI I Blood Wolves took it 8-1.

The daily tier-one circuits are where the regions stopped resembling each other. Thirty-one events ran in each region, worth $115,000 a night in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, $104,000 in the Americas and $92,000 in Asia/Pacific. Asia/Pacific was close to a closed shop: six different rosters won those 31 events and four of them took 29, with PHI I Blood Wolves and PHI I Disgrace on nine apiece, RoyalT1 on six and NEC.IGNITE on five, in fields that averaged 7.7 rosters. Europe, the Middle East and Africa spread the same 31 nights across eleven winners in fields averaging 8.6, and the Americas across ten winners in fields averaging 8.2. If you want to argue that one regional ladder was harder to win than the others, the concentration numbers are the argument.

The dates inside those circuits are what make the handover claim concrete. MEM | 404 won seven of the first fourteen European tier-one nights, on 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 11 and 14 December, and then exactly one more all month, on the 31st. Deva Academy won on 1 December, vanished for three weeks, and then took five of the final nine nights, on the 23rd, 26th, 27th, 28th and 30th. In Asia/Pacific, NEC.IGNITE owned the opening run from 1 to 4 December before PHI I Disgrace and PHI I Blood Wolves carved up the rest, with PHI I Blood Wolves closing the year on the 29th, 30th and 31st. In the Americas, all eleven of 🇧🇷 Potiguar GEOgraphic 🌎‘s wins inside this evidence set fell between 7 and 20 December and then stopped dead, with NEC I Cruel Thorn Kings and Tsimbidii picking up the back half.

The second-tier European ladder is the quiet counter-example, and it deserves a caveat rather than a headline. Nineteen events at $92,000 each paid competition points on the same circuit as tier one, but the fields averaged 4.7 rosters and thinned badly toward the end of the month, down to three in MOBA EMEA Zenith Invitational Tier 2 #162 and two in MOBA EMEA Zenith Invitational Tier 2 #171. Fifteen different rosters won those nineteen nights, and only eight went to the four most frequent winners, with 🇷🇺TEAM MUSHROOMS the nearest thing to a regular at three. Comparable money, comparable points, visibly less competition; treat placings there as weaker evidence than the tier-one equivalents rather than as equivalent lines on a record.

Best rosters

One caveat has to come first. The neutral rating layer is unavailable for December, so there is no independent score to lean on and nothing below should be read as one. This is a reading of results, and December’s results were split across two payment systems that never met, which is precisely why reasonable managers will order these differently.

My pick is MEM | 404, on breadth. It led the month’s earnings at $1,943,125, took 59 championships from a 326-121 record over 547 appearances, and won thirteen of the 128 competitions catalogued here. More to the point, it won in every format the month offered: three of the four European league rounds, an 8-0 run through the largest qualifier field, eight tier-one nights, a second-tier night, and the joint-third payout at MOBA Masters 10 on a 5-1 record. Nobody else covered that much ground. The case against it is real: its European daily form fell off a cliff after 14 December, and it finished the final league round in the bottom money band.

The strongest challenge comes from PHI | Orangutan Ganji, and it is a genuinely hard one to dismiss. It owns the single biggest result of the month, an unbeaten 7-0 through MOBA Masters 10 for $300,000, and a 118-13 record is the sharpest rate in this set. What holds me back is sample. 195 appearances against 547 is a different kind of month, five listed events is a thin resume, and the same roster had taken only $22,000 out of MOBA Masters 10 APAC Qualifier the day before it won everything. Peak against breadth is exactly the argument December was built to provoke, and I do not think the evidence closes it.

Tsimbidii is the third name that belongs at the front. Ninety championships, a 477-80 record over 624 appearances and $1,918,200 in winnings put it within $24,925 of the lead, and on pure efficiency it beats my pick comfortably. It also never won one of the twelve league rounds and left MOBA Masters 10 with $39,000, which is why I have it third rather than first. 🇧🇷 Potiguar GEOgraphic 🌎 has a similar shape with sharper edges: back-to-back league runs of 8-0 and 12-0, a 7-0 qualifier, eight daily wins, 291-57 overall, and then not a single win inside this evidence set after 20 December.

Below that, the ordering depends entirely on how much you rate the Asia/Pacific daily ladder. PHI I Disgrace and PHI I Blood Wolves each won nine of those 31 nights, in the most concentrated field of the three regions; PHI I Disgrace added 77 championships and a 364-88 record for $1,492,300, while PHI I Blood Wolves added MOBA APAC League S6.4 at 8-1 for $1,468,921. If that circuit is the hardest weekly grind in MOBA right now, both of them slot above 🇧🇷 Potiguar GEOgraphic 🌎 rather than below.

Two trajectory picks close the list. VAL | Ascendant 🪽 went from 2-5 and bottom-band money in MOBA EMEA League S6.1 to runner-up cash in MOBA EMEA League S6.2, joint-third money in MOBA Masters 10 EMEA Qualifier and then $180,000 and a 6-1 record at MOBA Masters 10; few rosters improved more inside four weeks. PHI -Fugitive Gaming- VAL produced the most compressed run of form anyone managed, 10-1 on 8 December, 7-0 through MOBA Masters 10 APAC Qualifier on the 13th and 9-0 on the 15th, and then gave most of it back with $65,000 at MOBA Masters 10 and a 2-5 finish in MOBA APAC League S6.4. Both belong in the conversation; neither has a case for the top of it.

So here is the question I would put to the room, because I am not certain of my own answer: if the month’s richest open field is the one result that has to be beaten, does MEM | 404’s thirteen-title spread across every format still outrank PHI | Orangutan Ganji’s single undefeated afternoon at MOBA Masters 10, or does winning the one event everybody entered settle first place on its own?

Notable transfers

The candidate set holds 64 moves, all denominated in USD, ranging from $185,000 to $570,000 and totalling $16,755,618. They were drawn from 199 fee-carrying candidates, so this is a shortlist of the month’s largest deals rather than a market total, and it was spread fairly evenly across the calendar: 29 landed before 15 December and 35 after. Two clubs account for a startling share of the movement, and neither of them was one of the rosters winning things.

The busiest desk belonged to Yellow Sub, an endpoint in twelve of the 64 deals, and it is easy to lose the thread because the club traded under five different names during December. Take the single week it kept one banner, 13 to 19 December, and the pattern is unmistakable. NS|SAV3L arrived on the 13th for $330,000. Sav3l left on the 14th for $200,000. Then on the 19th it sold twice in a day, Myst to PHI -Fugitive Gaming- VAL for $450,000 and Ekho for $300,000. One arrival, three departures, $330,000 in against $950,000 out, inside seven days. Stretch that to the full month and four purchases worth $1,230,000 sit against eight sales worth $2,230,598, a net outflow of $1,000,598 measured against $954,242 in prize money. This was the roster that won MOBA AMER League S6.1 on 1 December and reached joint-third money at MOBA Masters 10. It spent the rest of the month converting a squad into cash and a fresh name.

The tidiest sequence of December belongs to 🇧🇷 Potiguar GEOgraphic 🌎, which bought three players and sold none: FG_JiMi on the 4th for $200,000, NT||Doohm on the 7th for $300,000 and NT||Lamb on the 8th for $250,000, $750,000 committed inside five days. What followed was 8-0 in MOBA AMER League S6.2 on the 8th, 7-0 through MOBA Masters 10 AMER Qualifier on the 13th, 12-0 in MOBA AMER League S6.3 on the 15th and eight daily wins between the 7th and the 20th. Sequence is not causation and a five-day window is not a controlled experiment, but the shape is hard to ignore, and it stopped as abruptly as it started.

The counterparty story is bleaker. NEC - Nothing Toulouse sold both NT||Doohm and NT||Lamb within roughly twenty-four hours of each other, and on the same day as the first of those it was buying, taking Ghost off MEM | 404 for $190,000. It had finished second in MOBA AMER League S6.1 at 7-4 for $120,000. It then failed to appear in the payout list of any of the three remaining American league rounds and ended the month on $648,445 with a single daily win. Selling your two most expensive assets to a direct regional rival mid-season is a defensible move; it is rarely a comfortable one to watch.

VAL | Ascendant 🪽 ran the opposite play and timed it around MOBA Masters 10. RansoM arrived on 4 December for $200,000, landing between a 2-5 opening league round and a 6-2 second one. Then, two days after banking $180,000 at the open event, it handled both halves of a trade on 16 December, selling AE|Azrael for $300,000 and putting $215,000 of the proceeds straight back out on FF|N3rd. Build, cash, rebalance, all inside a fortnight.

The largest single fee arrived last and in the least obvious place. Deva Academy spent $840,000 in four days at the very end of December, taking DRX|Mangola for $270,000 on the 28th and then Royal|Odin for $570,000 on the 31st, the highest fee among all 199 candidates. That is more than the $819,447 the roster won across the entire month, and it followed a run of five wins in the final nine nights of the European daily circuit. The seller in the $570,000 deal was RoyalT1, which had spent December winning six Asia/Pacific tier-one nights and 81 championships, making this a rare cross-region sale at the top of the fee range and one of the few December deals that reads as a bet on January rather than a reaction to December.

LMS-Fyretoucher was the other loud room, an endpoint in eleven of the 64 deals, nine of them departures worth $2,260,010 against two arrivals worth $450,598. Its roster won $394,645 in prize money across the month, so it shipped out roughly 5.7 times its December earnings in fees. Under one of its several December names it sold five players in eleven days for a combined $1,265,010: FF|dubois for $225,000 on the 6th, GH|Reliz for $205,000 on the 7th, STK||jingg for $400,010 on the 10th, and then Piperr for $220,000 and FF|N3rd for $215,000 on the 16th. Put that beside the twelve-deal churn above and December’s market looks less broad than loud in two specific rooms: the two clubs behind twenty-two of the 64 largest moves finished on $954,242 and $394,645 in prize money, both spent the month rebranding themselves, and neither finished anywhere near the rosters that spent December winning.

MOBA GOAT debate

Eleven months of supported MOBA record now stand behind this argument, and December refuses to settle it. There is still no common cross month rating or point standing anywhere in the record, and December withholds even its own neutral rating layer. Worse for a ranking, the month paid in two currencies that never met: the open worldwide event, its three residency qualifiers and all twelve league rounds were worth $6,613,000 between them and paid no competition points at all, while every point in the evidence set came from the 112 daily invitationals. The four tests I have applied since June, repeat elite months, match efficiency, championship conversion and performance on the richest stages, split straight down that seam.

My first place stays with MEM | 404, and the run is now five consecutive months deep. August brought $1,979,780, 81 championships and two unbeaten regional league campaigns. September added $1,991,200, 82 championships and an 8-0 worldwide title worth $300,000. October supplied $1,780,286, another 81 championships, a 435-48 record and a 7-0 title in the documented point circuit. November was the heaviest at $2,617,700, 88 championships and a 466-73 line across 615 appearances. December adds the month’s cash lead again at $1,943,125, 59 championships from a 326-121 record over 547 appearances, and thirteen of the 128 competitions catalogued. That is $10,312,091 and 391 championships across five months without a gap, and no other roster here carries half that continuity. December also handed it the coverage accumulation cases usually lack: three of the four European league rounds, an 8-0 run through the largest qualifier field of the month at thirty rosters, eight tier one nights, a second tier night, and the joint third payout at the richest open field on 5-1.

The deduction is that December is the weakest of those five months on every rate the record keeps. Fifty nine championships sits under a band of 81, 82, 81 and 88, and a 326-121 line, roughly 73 percent, sits well under October’s 435-48 and November’s 466-73. Its European daily form fell off a cliff after 14 December, seven of the first fourteen nights and then exactly one more, and it closed the final league round in the bottom money band at 4-4. Most of all it took $108,000 from the one day the entire field entered. Better than the $65,000 it took from each of November’s three flagship days, and still not a win. Its last title on that stage was September.

Which is why PHI | Orangutan Ganji is nearer to first place than at any previous point in this record. June was modest, $798,590 and 22 championships at the head of a chasing pack. August was its widest month, $2,014,500, 79 championships, an unbeaten regional league title worth $200,000 and a 6-1 finish worth $180,000 at the richest worldwide event. Then it narrowed and stopped falling short: a $300,000 showcase won unbeaten in September, an 8-0 for another $300,000 in October, and two flagship days in November at $300,000 apiece off the lightest schedule of any contender that month, 436 appearances. December makes it 7-0 through the richest open field for a fifth $300,000, on the single afternoon that paid more than a fortnight of accumulation. November counted four unbeaten titles on the biggest stage and called it a peak sequence nothing else matched; December makes five inside four months. December also answered the charge November laid against it. The objection then was 1-2, 1-3 and 2-3 across three regional league rounds at the base $43,000. In December it opened its region by winning a league round 5-1 for $200,000, which is precisely the evidence that was missing.

What holds me back has not improved, and that is sample. It logged 195 competition appearances against 547, five events inside this month’s evidence set, and $670,276 for the month with $603,000 of that from those five. A 118-13 record is the sharpest rate anywhere in December, drawn from a schedule barely a third the size of the roster above it, and the day before it beat everybody it had taken $22,000 out of the Asia/Pacific qualifier. Peak is plainly the more valuable currency; breadth is the one eleven months of record can actually test. I take the second reading again, and more loosely than in November.

PHI -Fugitive Gaming- VAL came closest to overtaking both: October’s cash lead at $1,888,700 with 78 championships and three regional league titles worth $200,000 apiece on a combined 25-2, then $1,808,800 and a 416-96 record in November, then a December that opened 10-1, 7-0 and 9-0 inside eight days before it returned $65,000 from the open field and finished the closing league round 2-5 in the bottom band. Its problem is no longer a short run, it is that its best fortnight and its worst arrived in the same four weeks. Two newcomers deserve naming without a place: Tsimbidii finished $24,925 behind the cash lead on 90 championships and a 477-80 record, a better rate than my first choice managed, but with no league round win and $39,000 from the open field, and 🇧🇷 Potiguar GEOgraphic 🌎 paired 8-0 and 12-0 league runs with nothing after 20 December. One month is an entry into the argument, not a claim on it.

The older cases are unchanged. PHI⚡️Vortex Raijin⚡️VAL still owns the run this debate was measured against for months, $5,961,082 from June through August with 8-0 titles worth $300,000 at the richest event in both July and August, but four months have passed without a supported result and the five month total above now clears that cash figure. Akuma Team keeps three elite months in June, July and September, Apathy keeps 406 championships across April, May and June, Skillbox keeps the cleanest early loss columns at 674-57 and 477-55, and Washed Team keeps twelve perfect evening titles from sixteen entries between 4 and 20 May. None was beaten out of this argument; they stopped supplying results for it to test, which should be read as unknown rather than as decline.

So here is the question, because December declined to answer November’s. Each candidate did the thing it was accused of being unable to do without doing the thing that would have settled it: PHI | Orangutan Ganji finally won a league round and still played only 195 matches, while MEM | 404 improved its flagship return from $65,000 to $108,000 and still did not win the day. If you had to commit before January’s results arrive, would you rank on $10,312,091 and 391 championships banked across five uninterrupted months, or on five unbeaten $300,000 afternoons taken in four, and what exactly would PHI | Orangutan Ganji have to post across a full thirty day schedule of league and daily play for you to stop calling its case a sample problem?