In their final VALORANT Champions 2022 post-match press conference, XSET’s coach Don “Syyko” Muir stated that XSET did not ask for the last round to be replayed in their lower bracket match against FunPlus Phoenix.
In a lower bracket match today, EU’s FPX and NA’s XSET encountered a bug where a Killjoy turret faced the wrong direction, causing an XSET player to look in the wrong direction.
Riot decided the glitch was bad enough to force a re-do of the last round.
In the post-match press conference, Syyko explained the choice to take the Killjoy bug into consideration and replay the last round of the match was not their decision. Dot Esports has reached out to Riot for comment, and Riot has confirmed it was their decision to replay the round.
“We did not at any time, at any point, in any way ask for this round to be replayed. This was 100 percent a Riot decision, I hope that they put out an announcement clarifying that,” Syyko said.
“I don’t think it’s fair for the players to be getting hate from Twitter, or from this other team. It’s not anything we asked for, even remotely, so we are happy Riot obviously noticed the bug and allowed us to replay the round and the match to be played out fairly but that being said, I don’t want anybody thinking it was sour grapes and something we asked for.”
After the match, players were getting ready for post-match conferences when Riot pulled the players back in and told them they would be replaying the last round. When the teams sat back down to play, XSET won the repeated round, took the match into overtime, but ultimately lost in round 30. The time between the match’s conclusion and Riot’s announcement about replaying the round was a little over an hour.
FPX’s Kyrylo “ANGE1” Karasov said he didn’t think the VALORANT round should have been replayed because it ruined competitive integrity.
“I think it just a very bad situation to have, that’s why I was very angry about it. I don’t think it should [have been] replayed just because of the turret bug. It’s not our fault. We shouldn’t be involved in this,” ANGE1 said.
“I think it’s obvious for everyone who’s watching that this bug is not something big and from my point of view, it ruined competitive integrity.”
Because FPX ended up winning in overtime, the match result stays the same but with a few extra rounds tacked on. They will still move on in the tournament and will play DRX next, while XSET’s tournament run is over.
