Vivo Keyd and Acend to replay third map at Champions in new Riot ruling

After a re-examination of the Riot Games ruling on the camera exploit by Vivo Keyd in their match against Acend at VALORANT Champions, Riot has ruled that Acend and Vivo Keyd will replay Map 3 with Acend starting with a seven round advantage. The replay will start on Sunday at 8:30 a.m. ET, a half hour before the tournament’s regular start time. Despite ruling on this exploit on the same day as the match, the ruling itself gained backlash due to the lack of a match replay or tech pause.

Update: After further review, we will be replaying the Acend vs VK match at the start of today’s broadcast with Acend ahead 7-0.
Read the competitive ruling here: https://t.co/S83VpYrfiI pic.twitter.com/hLFcOpDWtG

— VALORANT Champions Tour (@ValorantEsports) December 5, 2021

“Under the VALORANT rules, due to the recalculated map score of 12-10, neither team has reached the necessary number of rounds to win the map. Therefore, a winner cannot be declared, which is a new situation for VALORANT esports,” the ruling said. “Given that Acend were the disadvantaged team, we worked with them on a solution and ultimately decided to replay Map 3 starting with a 7-0 round score in favor of Acend to account for the total number of exploited rounds plus an additional round for economic impact.”

The original ruling and how it changed

The exploit was used in the Acend vs. Vivo Keyd match on Map 3, Breeze. Vivo Keyd were able to look through a bugged texture with Cypher’s camera and obtain information that they shouldn’t be able to. Despite Vivo Keyd only winning three out of the six rounds, VALORANT Esports officials gave all six rounds to Acend. Acend was also awarded an extra round for lost economy, which gave Acend the map and match victory.

During Map 3 of the series between Acend and VK, Jonathan "JhoW" Gloria, of Vivo Keyd, violated a rule of the VALORANT Global Competition Policy.
Read more: https://t.co/WjqnDLETnC

— VALORANT Champions Tour (@ValorantEsports) December 4, 2021

Outrage soon followed from fans of the Brazilian team. Fans cited the 15-minute long technical pause during the Sentinels vs. FURIA Esports match over a different exploit that most players didn’t think was an exploit. They believe the match between Vivo Keyd and Acend should have been stopped, rather than end with a major post-match judgement call. Riot said they did not initially realize the camera was used during the match.

The lack of a match replay pushed Brazilian fans to start a hashtag on Twitter, #justiceforkeyd. Other players within the competition spoke out on this issue, talking about how forfeiting the maps looked like the easy way out of not noticing the exploit mid-match.

After the community backlash to the ruling, the team postponed the match between Team Envy and Acend on Dec. 4 to re-evaluate the original ruling. Now, the VALORANT team has decided to replay a portion of the match.