With new content dropping every other month, VALORANT’s list of bugs isn’t going to stop growing anytime soon, and one of the most broken ones is now plaguing the game’s newest agent. A flaw in Deadlock’s sound-sensing traps is setting them off even after her death, posing difficulty for players on the opposite end.
A number of players, including myself, were hit by the bug after Deadlock’s launch on June 27. I was left scratching my head when it first happened to me, and to top it off, my team went on to lose the round. I tried recreating the bug but failed since the trigger wasn’t that apparent.
Fortunately, a player named JulyAmCFGDm captured the bug in action and posted it on Reddit on July 21.
As the video shows, Deadlock was dead, and her trap had the inactive indicator up on it, set up near Bind A Site’s default plant. Even then, it activated and concussed him when Yoru went for the defuse, eventually leading to them losing the round. It’s definitely not an intended feature since all other sentinel traps deactivate after the agent’s death.
Later in the thread, another VALORANT player named Dva_main203 shed light on the bug’s trigger, and from the looks of it, it’s definitely not convenient or useful to reproduce in a game.
According to Dva_main203, if Deadlock dies right before setting up a Sonic Sensor, it’ll remain active for the rest of the round. For those of you who are hit with the idea of abusing it, deliberately reproducing it in your competitive games is nearly impossible—unless you’re in a custom match.
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It’s also entirely useless since the team’s Deadlock has to die, leaving you with a greater disadvantage. Unless, for some reason, you would rather have a bugged Sonic Sensor over a Deadlock with her entire kit and weapons on your team.
That being said, it’s possible for the bug to occur randomly, causing an unfair outcome. One player named TrainBoy45 said they found it to be an always-on mechanic. “I haven’t had a single sonic sensor deactivate yet off death,” they said. On the contrary, some players were lucky not to face the bug at all.
While expecting perfection from an ever-evolving online multiplayer game may not be justified, especially for new content releases, broken features like these are never a delight for the players to face in a ranked match. Naturally, no one’s pleased with the bug’s presence. Players even took to mocking Riot’s negligence with VALORANT’s state.
Now that the bug is out in the air, Riot may acknowledge and fix it up with the game’s next update, patch 7.02, which is expected to drop next week.
