VALORANT player runs into bizarre match that has people questioning the other team’s existence

From Ascendant down to Iron, it’s no secret that a common concern within the VALORANT community has long been players on alternate accounts seemingly running rampant in Competitive.

Especially in a game like VALORANT where things like mechanics, utility usage, and game sense are immediately distinguishable between players, it’s easy to point the finger and question the legitimacy of one’s rank at any given time.

After all, why risk your own account’s Rank Rating (RR) when you or a friend can simply hop on a “smurf” account and stack the deck in your favor? Of course, the main barrier to this—aside from having good morals and Riot Games’ terms of service—is that new accounts must be at least Account Level 20 before they can play ranked, which takes a good chunk of time to accomplish considering Account Points (AP) can only be earned by finishing public matches.

On May 22, one clip went viral on Reddit that seemingly has players convinced that it is footage of new smurf accounts being created for mass distribution.

The one-minute clip appears to show a five-stack match between FitPresent4638’s clan, ISH, and what some Redditors are assuming to be bots being used for the purpose of making alt accounts.

At the start of round four, presumably after breezing through a pistol round, a force round, and a bonus round, FitPresent4638 and their team are seen charging right into the defender spawn. There, the team of suspected bots can be seen devoid of any spatial awareness and with nothing but Classics in their hands before they’re promptly taken out. In the kill feed, it appears their names are all “king1.”

Suddenly, the odd squad then seemingly decides to forfeit the game, which then shows in the clip that it was a “Compétition,” or Competitive match the whole time.

“That’s how iron accounts are born,” one comment reads. “Well this has made me [realize] that I think my friend bought his account to smurf,” another wrote.

This clip left our VALORANT staff confused. None of us have ever seen this kind of player behavior in our matches, not even at beginner levels.

Considering that all of the king1 accounts had the same name and no interest whatsoever in winning the ranked match, it certainly doesn’t seem groundless to suggest that some sort of foul play was at work here.