SuperMassive Blaze forfeited the first map of their best-of-three series against FOKUS in the upper bracket of the EMEA VCT Challengers Promotion Tournament today due to a player on SMB not arriving to the match on time.
On stream, the match’s start time was pushed back by 10 minutes before EMEA VCT officials announced on Twitter that SMB had violated rule 7.2.2 of the VCT rulebook. After 10 minutes of waiting, SMB were officially forced to forfeit the first map, which would have been Ascent. The VALORANT series moved straight into Haven with SMB down 0-1, a map that FOKUS ended up winning 13-8 after a monster Jett performance from former Astralis CS:GO AWPer Jakob “JUGi” Hansen.
On Twitter, SMB’s general manager Atahan Dikmen asked fans to “be calm,” saying that the decision by Riot and VCT was not unfair. The specific SMB player who was not ready for today’s match has not yet been identified.
SMB are already in a tough position of having to play in the EMEA VCT Challengers Promotion Tournament to avoid relegation after finishing last in their group during Challengers One with a 0-5 record. Now with the loss today, they move down to the lower bracket of the Promotion Tournament and must win three straight series just to make it back into Challengers.
FOKUS, who finished first in the DACH: Evolution regional league (Germany, Austria, Switzerland), will now play BIG in the upper bracket final and can secure their spot in EMEA VCT Challengers Two with a single series win, and have two opportunities to do so.
