VALORANT team who beat fan favourite turns out to be cheating
A VALORANT Game Changers North America Series team called noot noot was forced to forfeit their match against Complexity GX3 for cheating.
Riot Games announced the decision on their Twitter, finding that during the match, "competitive integrity was compromised by noot not."
While Riot will launch an investigation, team members of noot not - as well as fan favourite DisguistedToast, whose teams had lost against the alleged cheaters in previous rounds of Series 3 - have publicly commented on the matter.
Unknown cheating methods
No details as to the manner in which noot noot is alleged to have cheated are currently known, with Riot's statements only loosely specifying a violation of competitive integrity.
According to a screenshot that noot noot team member xann posted, the player in question appears to be malibu. The screenshot shared seemingly shows a comment by privated Twitter account @malibunu.
The tweet says: "Here’s what I’ll say. I didn’t cheat, I am trans, and the people closest to me know that is true. That headshot thing was definitely troll as f#*k. The ban was probably for ban evading but I don’t know. I should technically be unbanned by now."
Xann also commented on the matter, explaining that the team had only gotten together specifically for Game Changers shortly before the start of the event. "I met malibu literally two weeks before GC3 and never once did it seem like they were cheating.
"We have 0 context and we really have no idea what they found or what truly happened. If they were cheating then me, Mili, and Karie had quite literally just met them and we rebuilt "noot noot" just for GC3 to pug it out and have fun."
Potential impact on the tournament
Given the allegations made against noot noot, it led to community members speculating whether the team had cheated in prior matches and, if so, if one of the teams ought to take their spot.
Various community members responded to Riot's competitive ruling Tweet, asking the tournament organiser to bring Team Disguised back in. During the upper quarterfinals, DSG faced off against noot noot and lost the match in a tight 1:2, with a 12:14 last map on Ascent.
Streamer and team owner Jeremy "DisguisedToast" Wang shared his frustrations, tweeting that his team had spent over $300,000 USD on developing a VALORANT roster, flying them out to multiple boot camps, and committing serious time to practice only to be sent to the lower bracket by a team that is alleged to have cheated.
A conclusion to the investigation by Riot can be expected soon, though it appears unlikely that DSG would be noot noot's slot in the lower bracket.
