Who are noot noot, the team involved in VALORANT’s latest cheating scandal?

VALORANT Game Changers team “noot noot” have become embroiled in a cheating scandal after a Riot Games ruling declared their match against Complexity GX3 a forfeit.

Noot noot aren’t incredibly well-known, especially compared to many of the players and orgs that compete in VALORANT Game Changers. So who is this team that everyone is talking about?

VALORANT Game Changers noot noot cheating scandal, explained

Noot noot are a free agent squad that were forced to forfeit a match against Complexity GX3. Riot’s anti-cheat measures found that “competitive integrity was compromised by noot noot.”

The news of the forfeit drew ire from members of the VALORANT community, including Shopify Rebellion, who trolled noot noot for losing while cheating. Online personality and org owner Disguised Toast was flabbergasted that noot noot was disqualified from the tournament. The r/ValorantCompetitive subreddit is on a detective vibe, trying to find out exactly how many matches noot noot influenced with cheating. In hindsight, there are several Malibu clips that look suspicious.

Malibu, the player accused of cheating, denies the allegations, stating that the integrity violation could be for ban evasion. Loic “effys” Sauvageau, head coach for Version1, seemed to imply that one noot noot player’s submitted ID photos were AI-generated.

Noot noot doesn’t have a ton of successes in the Game Changers series. They’re also relatively unknown. VLR.gg only has two team members’ real names listed on their team page: Marceline “karie” Carson, a player, and Cole “Lycain” Ramsey, the team’s manager. They have a handful of top placements in tournaments like the Sakura Cup and Super Girl Gamer Pro Summer 2023. In Game Changers Series III, they knocked Disguised GC to the lower bracket before being humbled by Shopify Rebellion and suffering a forfeit loss to Complexity GX3. In total, the team has won $5,250 total in prize pool money.

Noot noot player “mili” addressed the controversy, saying “I am so incredibly sorry to everyone that were supporters and are now disappointed in us. I came back to the team knowing nothing of the new pickup other than that they were a good player. I saw them play and I wasn’t suspicious but in hindsight I can see as to how people can consider it obvious.”