This weird Cypher Neural Theft bug may lose you a crucial VALORANT round

VALORANT’s mechanics are crafted to make it predictable, enabling players to win rounds by closely following their opponents’ movement. Unfortunately, it’s not immune to bugs that sabotage this process—and Cypher’s ultimate seems to be their latest prey. 

As pointed out by an affected VALORANT player on Reddit, Cypher’s Neural Theft is possibly pinging the enemy locations incorrectly due to a bug. In the video below, you can see how Neural Theft’s first ping indicates Viper’s location as hugging A Main’s Bricks on Breeze.

Noting the first ping, the player chooses to run down Mid, not expecting anyone in Mid Stack—only to be surprisingly greeted by Viper with a Snake Bite and a lethal Vandal headshot. It was a three-vs-three situation, so the bug obviously cost them a winnable round.  

As several other VALORANT players did in the thread, you can try to explain the situation by saying that Viper has legs, letting her move from A Main to Mid Stack in between those pings. But consider this: Is it possible to move that many meters on foot in two seconds unless you are Yoru? Even if it was possible, the player ran down Mid immediately after the first ping. If Viper had moved from A Main to Mid Stack on foot, the player would have caught her crossing from Mid Doors towards Stack.

The only way to explain this situation is through a bug affecting Cypher’s Neural Theft. A glitch on the enemy’s side might cause an anomaly, too, causing the ultimate to malfunction. One player pointed out how players’ pings fluctuate quite a bit, indicating a server hiccup and possibly resulting in the reported glitch.

Unfortunately, as much as we tried digging for it, we haven’t been able to reproduce this bug yet. If it wasn’t a one-time server glitch, it’s definitely a game-breaking VALORANT bug that calls for Riot Games’ immediate attention. After all, we don’t want it affecting our favorite esports players in their upcoming VCT battles.