VALORANT’s terrifying bug causing stretched Sage faces filling the screen was caused by Singularity finisher

Riot broke down all the contributing factors that caused the pesky VALORANT bug responsible for reverting Patch 1.11.

100 Thieves’ John “steel” Nissan encountered the hilarious bug last week when he walked into an Omen smoke and saw several Sage faces stretched across his screen. Principal software engineer Riot Nu provided fans with a thorough explanation today, pointing to the Singularity finisher as one of the culprits.

For the bug to effect players, three factors have to be met: you have to get killed by the Singularity finisher, be inside a smoke or get nearsighted, and have fast respawn enabled in your match. The Singularity finisher would manipulate a player’s meshes, an invisible layer that becomes visible when you’re nearsighted, and cause “destructive modifications,” according to Nu.

Riot also began experimenting with “fast respawn” technology in the bomb mode, tech that’s already being used in the Deathmatch and Spike Rush modes. Instead of completely building the character from scratch after they die, fast respawn simply resets the character state to its initial values.

All three contributed to an odd bug that was difficult to discern at first and forced Riot to roll back that patch. The current Patch 1.11 has fast respawn turned off in bomb mode to avoid this issue. But Riot will implement the feature in Patch 1.12 again after evaluating how all finishers work with fast respawn.