If you think time can’t be negative, a quirky new VALORANT bug, possibly a product of an anomaly in the latest Patch 6.10, will prove you wrong. The bug is seemingly extending ban timers infinitely, causing dismay among those affected—although a “permanent” break from the stressful tactical shooter sounds nice to a number of players.
On May 26, a VALORANT player named Firm-Importance-4373 ran into a majorly confusing situation when the ban timer on his account started displaying time in negative values, leading to an infinitely long timer. They shared their mysterious experience on Reddit, attracting hilarious reactions from others.
In response to Firm-Importance-4373’s million-dollar question “So when can I play….?,” a player called DeathfireGrasponYT hilariously replied: “You will be able to play yesterday.” Another popular comment was from Blazerpl, who highlighted the positive: “The game did something good for you.”
The community didn’t miss the opportunity to advise the affected player to enjoy the “freedom” and do something outside of VALORANT, now that they have received a seemingly permanent ban from the game.
A player named Kingofowls812 jokingly speculated that Firm-Importance-4373 has run into an easter egg regarding VALORANT’s next agent, probably carrying time-bending abilities. A time traveler in a tactical shooter? Strange.
While only a few players mentioned having faced similar situations, even limited occurrences of this situation seem unacceptable, as it prevents queuing altogether.
One player accused the latest update, released on May 23, of being the culprit behind the infinite ban glitch. Another commenter suggested that leaving the game open for the ban timer to run out causes this bug.
Thankfully, there’s a rather easy workaround to tackle the bug, no matter the reason: Simply restart the game. If restarting VALORANT doesn’t fix the issue, log out of your Riot account and log back in: you should be able to queue once again.
A third workaround, suggested by a user, lets you fix the issue without closing the game: Enter the Practice Range or start a custom match and then exit the match.
While it may be highly satisfying to see shameless abusers and cheaters receiving a permanent ban, this could happen to anyone—even those who have just dodged a queue for the second time to avoid toxicity or insta-locking players.
Truly, the recently deployed Patch 6.10 has been causing more annoyance than good. After its arrival, several players expressed disappointment with the “improved” agent portraits and blurred agent icons, not to forget the ever-lingering performance hiccups and countless bugs that exist at all times.
