by in
Riot Games has suspended two players from the Valorant Champions Tour Game Changers owing to their use of vulgar language during an argument in the community about teabagging in games. The ruling comes a month after the issue first started.
Riot banned Dawn “Dawn” Park and Vivian “Risorah” Dela Cruz from competing with a team in a Riot-sanctioned event for three and nine months, respectively. Dawn was banned for making “vulgar and targeted” comments about another player on social media, and Risorah was banned for harassing and making targeted vulgar comments about another player.
Riot Games’ rulings read:
“Dawn ‘Dawn’ Park made a vulgar and targeted comment towards another player via Dawn’s personal social media. This is a violation of Rule 7.3.1 of the VALORANT Champions Tour Global Competition Policy. Dawn is banned from any association or affiliation with a team in a Riot-sanctioned competition for three months, beginning from the date of the latest violation and ending on September 27, 2022.”
“Vivian ‘Risorah’ Dela Cruz repeatedly and systematically targeted and isolated another player via Risorah’s personal social media, in addition to making multiple vulgar comments towards this player. These are violations of Rule 7.3.1 and 7.3.4 of the VALORANT Champions Tour Global Competition Policy. Risorah is banned from any association or affiliation with a team in a Riot-sanctioned competition for nine months, beginning from the date of the latest violation and ending on March 27, 2022.”
This is coming a few weeks after a Discord channel was shut down for the same reason. The Galorants Discord was closed down as a result of the controversy, which began when a player commented on whether teabagging in a video game is perceived as sexual harassment.
The moderators of the channel where the argument took place were slow to intervene, allowing the situation to fester rapidly and spread across social media. Forcing Galorants to take down the Discord server for a week to address a slew of issues. On June 24, the initial debate began and festered in July. Riot issued its official decision on the two players involved about a month later.
The ruling also comes a day after an accusation of account sharing was made during the Astral Clash tournament. The unrelated tournament was hosted by Gen.G and the finalists are scheduled to compete on LAN in California. In a Twitlonger post, Dawn denied using vulgar language and cited the evidence Riot claims it used to reach its conclusions.
People in the VCT Game Changers community are becoming dissatisfied with the amount of conversation going on in the scene. Many of the VCT Game Changers tournaments, as well as other women and marginalized gender tournaments for Valorant, have been fraught with controversy. Game Changers appears to be the most troubled tournament community, despite some controversies that have been present throughout the VCT tier-one tournament circuit.
Riot Games has been particularly selective about the rules its enforces with Game Changers, such as allowing male participants to substitute for a women-only tournament and enforcing its lateness rule only when necessary. At the time of writing, there has been no official ruling on the Astral Clash accusations issued.
