Vodafone Giants bested bref in yesterday’s EU VCT Stage Three: Challengers One open qualifier match, 2-1. And now, bref is crying foul.
Bref’s Tristan “Dawn” Bornet accused Vodafone Giants of abusing Cypher’s Spycam on Breeze, detailing his claims on Reddit earlier today. The player and his team “demand” that Giants are disqualified for allegedly using the exploit in at least six of 12 rounds.
The Spycam spot allows Cypher to see A site’s entrance through a glitched awning, but it isn’t visible from the attacker’s point of view unless they push far onto the site. This means it can’t be destroyed until it’s too late and it provides important intel that defenders can use to counter the opposition. It’s common for an attacking Viper to throw her Toxic Screen onto A, for example, blocking their opponents’ vision while the squad pushes onto the site for a plant. The glitched Spycam potentially nullifies that strat and makes planting much harder.
Dawn cited rule 7.2.6 of the official VCT Global Competition Policy, which asserts that “intentionally using any in-game bug to seek an advantage is exploiting and is prohibited.” Ultimately, the tournament operator determines whether an exploit violates VALORANT’s design purpose. After bref’s match against Vodafone Giants, Dawn allegedly brought his claims to a tournament supervisor who said the “usage of the camera will not changing [sic] the result of the match,” according to a screengrab provided by Dawn.
“In the 1st step a team get informed that they are used a bug and get warned without any impact to the result,” the tournament supervisor said. “Till now the camera is allowed since it’s not listed as bug at all… we are in the investigation and till we finished it with Riot this is not forbidden.”
This isn’t the first time a team has been accused of using an exploit in competitive play. Guild Esports received a forfeit loss in last year’s First Strike: Europe playoffs after using an illegal Sage boost against G2 Esports. This was the first time in VALORANT esports history that a team received a significant disqualification and G2 took Guild’s place in their following match.
Vodafone Giants are slated to take on Rix.GG Thunder in the round of 16 at 11am CT today.
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