UK esports organisation Guild Esports were hit with a competitive ruling from Riot Games over an incident in the Valorant Game Changers yesterday.
Guild’s women’s Valorant team, Guild X, forfeited a map using the in-game surrender option when they were losing 5-1 to G2 in round three of the upper bracket in the Valorant Champions Tour (VCT) 2022 Game Changers EMEA Series 2 tournament.
As punishment, Guild X lost a map ban during the map veto for their next match versus SuperMassive Blaze, Riot Games said in the below competitive ruling.
Riot said Guild broke section 7.1.2 of the Valorant Global Competition Policy, which states that “all teams and team members must observe the highest standards of personal integrity and good sportsmanship at all times.”
Guild’s director of esports, Grant Rousseau, explained that the forfeit was an accident in the below tweet and clip:
Despite this, Guild went on a solid run in the lower bracket, beating SuperMassive Blaze, Futbolist Jeff and fellow UK organisation Rix.GG Lightning to reach the grand final versus G2 Gozen.
This means Guild will have a chance to enact revenge in the final, which takes place on Sunday May 8th 2022 from 5pm BST.
It’s not the first time Guild have got into hot water in Valorant. In late 2020, Guild Esports were disqualified from Valorant First Strike Europe over a bug exploit.
In the most recent VCT Game Changers tournament prior to this one, UK orgs Guild and Tenstar finished in the top three at Valorant Game Changers EMEA Series 1, as G2 Gozen cheekily celebrated first place by carrying rubbish bags with the Guild logo on them.
Guild first announced their Guild X team last year.
Dom is an award-winning writer and finalist of the Esports Journalist of the Year 2023 award. He graduated from Bournemouth University with a 2:1 degree in Multi-Media Journalism in 2007.
As a long-time gamer having first picked up the NES controller in the late ’80s, he has written for a range of publications including GamesTM, Nintendo Official Magazine, industry publication MCV and others. He worked as head of content for the British Esports Federation up until February 2021, when he stepped back to work full-time on Esports News UK and offer esports consultancy and freelance services. Note: Dom still produces the British Esports newsletter on a freelance basis, so our coverage of British Esports is always kept simple – usually just covering the occasional press release – because of this conflict of interest.
