The NA VCT Last Chance Qualifier faces more issues as the event has been postponed until at least Friday over “competitive integrity” issues.
In what's quickly become a debacle, Riot Games has announced that they will be postponing the Valorant North America LCQ another day.
"We have decided to postpone Thursday's matches as we continue working to implement solutions that will allow the LCQ to continue safely and without compromising competitive integrity," Riot said in a statement. "We will update the community as additional information becomes available."
Competitive Integrity and Lag
Of course, the question of competitive integrity is in hand because of mass server issues the Valorant North America LCQ faced on day one. Esports.gg spoke to 100 Thieves Nitr0 after his matches on Tuesday evening where he reported mass issues of rubberbanding, the server freezing while time continued to tick, and other technical issues that wouldn't be happening if the event was played on LAN.
"The servers were lagging, we were having problems throwing our utility out," Nitro told Esports.gg. "Sometimes we’d drone, and his [Hiko’s] screen would turn black and he would be glitched into a wall, then he’d rubber band out of it. Sometimes the server would freeze for 10 seconds and the clock would keep ticking. There was a bunch of technical problems because of the online servers. If it was on LAN, in theory, it’d be smooth sailing. I can remember three rounds specifically where it affected the outcome of a Round. I don’t think that would have changed anything really [in terms of overall results], but it would have changed those specific rounds."
[esports_link url="https://esports.gg/news/valorant/100t-nitr0-vct-na-last-chance-qualifier-interview/"]
COVID strikes again
As for safety, there have been multiple instances of players testing positive for COVID-19 only to shortly thereafter take a test that shows negative. Regardless, LA County guidelines are preventing Riot from carrying on with their event with people who have tested positive.
Riot has not yet disclosed how this will affect the event's schedule. It's also unknown whether or not players will have to marathon matches when they do resume. We've reached out to Riot to get a timeline on any further updates and will update this article as soon as we know more.
For all the latest on the Valorant Championship Tour and when NA might finally get its act together, keep it locked here to Esports.gg.