VALORANT throwers are allegedly holding lobbies hostage unless players download this app

As if intentional throwing in VALORANT wasn’t enough of a headache already, offenders have allegedly begun forcing others to install a popular application to earn referral rewards under threat of throwing matches if their team refuses to comply.   

In a Reddit post from May 15, a VALORANT player named swanpenguin highlighted their stressful experience against a “thrower”, claiming they asked the team to download an application and redeem their discount codes or they’d go AFK, leaving them playing the entire match four-versus-five. 

Swanpenguin then narrated how the player offered the same deal to the enemy team in exchange for throwing the match. Unfortunately and sadly, the enemy team complied, and the victimized team had to play the match with one teammate down. The thrower not only stayed AFK but also traded their teammates’ locations in All-Chat.

Later, in one of the post’s sub-threads, a commenter asked if the app in question was Temu, and swanpenguin claimed it was. It’s an e-commerce platform that went live in 2022 and became an instant hit among budget shoppers. Temu partnered with Roblux recently, so it isn’t unheard of in the world of video games. Dot Esports reached out to Temu for a statement but didn’t receive a reply by the time of publishing.

While swanpenguin said he wouldn’t be bothered by throwers normally, he weirdly had to face the same incident three times on that day. Another VALORANT player named keetboy also reported facing the “Temu throwing” experience in their ranked games multiple times recently. 

While throwing in VALORANT for financial profit (see: crypto-throwing) isn’t new, doing so for app referrals is definitely something we haven’t seen so far. This begs the question of whether throwing for Temu or similar shopping platforms is a new trend in VALORANT. And, if true, how far can it go without effective damage control from Riot? 

The post caused several players to share their frustration against VALORANT’s throwing and smurfing issues. 

The most popular comment was from a player named nverdzhan, who noted that they would leave the game if they had a similar experience. “Ain’t no amount of RR worth my own sanity,” nverdzhan wrote. Others suggested muting such throwers and moving on, although ignoring such situations certainly seems hard at times. 

Another suggestion urged Riot to introduce a verified queue in VALORANT.

A player called NoUsernamelol9812 shared a very relatable “thrower” experience they had with a Phoenix in their game. “Took the spike for no reason, used molly on us, used flash on us and wall to not let us plant… No one was being rude to him, no one was talking, just giving coms,” they wrote. Unfortunately, this is a common situation multiple VALORANT players face. 

A number of players also pointed out the need for a change in the remake system, which currently requires all five agents on a team to give their consent. “I don’t understand why the vote can’t be at least 4man, there shouldn’t be any problem since 4stack is not possible so people can’t troll with votes,” a player named NovaAkumaa wrote. 

Furthermore, players cannot remake after the second round, which forces them to continue participating in a toxic environment. 

VALORANT’s ranked ladder seems to be in a dire situation when it comes to smurfing and throwing, and players have been begging Riot to introduce a system to tackle such problems ever since the game’s release in 2020. 

While Riot has introduced small barriers against offenders and tightened up Vanguard’s policies, it hasn’t managed to completely eradicate the problem yet. It has, however, repeatedly assured fans that the team is constantly working on reducing such reports and punishing offenders as much as possible.