G2 Esports penalized for using exploit in VCT EMEA

VALORANT Champions Tour Europe, Middle East and Africa has released a statement on Twitter outlining a penalty for G2 Esports due to their usage of an in-game exploit in an official VCT EMEA Challengers match. This violates section 7.2.6 of the VALORANT Global Competition Policy and will result in G2 losing a map ban during map veto phase during their next official VCT EMEA match.

Competitive Ruling – G2 Esports pic.twitter.com/3gIpmnnImX

— VALORANT Esports EMEA (@valesports_emea) March 4, 2022

The rule violation occurred during G2 Esports’ game against SuperMassive Blaze on Feb. 20. The two teams played on Haven, where a known exploit involves Jett being able to jump on top of the box in the middle of C site without having to use an Updraft. Wassim “keloqz” Cista was the player who used the exploit; however, he left the team for unrelated reasons shortly after the match against SuperMassive Blaze. He has since joined Team Heretics. The penalty will take effect in G2 Esports’ match against Acend, which will take place on March 5. Though it will certainly disadvantage G2 in that they won’t be able to make their usual map bans, members of the VALORANT community have expressed discontent with the relative severity of the punishment – or lack thereof.

Didn’t teams get disqualified for this in other regions lol? And they didn’t even have previous warnings on record? Seems like a very light punishment for G2

— Tanizhq (@Tanizhq) March 4, 2022

Some cite a similar incident in VCT Malaysia and Singapore, where team OG Brudders used the same Haven exploit in their match on Feb. 17 and were disqualified from the tournament. OG Brudders were disqualified due to having already been penalized for a previous infraction, where they communicated with their coach during their match on Feb. 9. Their penalty for communicating with their coach was disqualification from the match. G2 Esports have similarly received a warning in VCT EMEA before. They were given an official warning on Feb. 3 for unauthorized communication with their coach, the same rule violation as OG Brudders.

Competitive Ruling – G2 Esports pic.twitter.com/8K6uMSwuIS

— VALORANT Esports EMEA (@valesports_emea) February 3, 2022