Nicholas “Yehty” Tesolin, a Canadian observer for the VCT, could have lost his VALORANT account for good if it wasn’t for a random good samaritan.
Yehty revealed earlier today that he received one of the strangest emails of his life. Someone tracked down who he is after their friend bought his VALORANT account, which had been stolen without Yehty’s knowledge, on a black market of sorts. Apparently, there’s a trend in Turkey of buying random VALORANT accounts that have most likely been breached, according to the email Yehty received.
“Last week my friend bought a random account and it’s actually your account,” the email reads. The person went on to provide Yehty with the username and password of his account so he’d know the emailer was telling the truth. The tipster’s friend sent them the account to look at all the great skins Yehty has, but they felt guilty.
“I was like ‘man, this is wrong, this is someone else’s account and it’s just not good,'” the email reads. “Don’t get me wrong man, I’m not writing this email for bad reasons, I did some research on you and found out you are a Riot observer, right? I just wanted to let you know I’m against this random account thing and I’m just informing you that your account has been stolen, I guess. So just change your password and be careful, please.”
The person who emailed Yehty noticed that the account had a Fist Bump gun buddy, which can only be given out by Rioters. After they saw the rare item, the tipster did some research, found Yehty’s Twitch channel and Liquipedia page, and decided to contact him to return his stolen account.
Yehty actually remembers logging on to his account less than a week ago and noticed that two skins had changed randomly. But the VCT observer didn’t consider that his account could have been breached and just thought it was a bug since he swaps between tournament clients often.
“Big thank you to this guy, he’s a legend for taking the initiative to reach out,” Yehty said. “If anyone is uncertain about the security of your account, change your password just in case, I had no notice of a security breach through any medium for this, no email or flag on the account afaik.”
This is definitely something that Riot Games should look into, especially after Yehty’s testimony. It’s not a good look to have people stealing VALORANT accounts to sell on a black market. It’s unclear if the devs will implement something to increase the security of VALORANT accounts or just warn people that their account may have been breached.
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