In the grand history of stories like Juwanna Mann and Tootsie, the eSports community now has their very own entry in the “lying about gender to get ahead” canon.
5v5 FPS game Valorant recently hosted an open qualifier for their Game Changers championship, a tournament dedicated to showcasing teams of underrepresented genders in the VCT scene. The league has apparently been a bit prone to drama, but none moreso than Eclectiq’s “Cerise” roster.
EQ Cerise first hit a rough patch when one of their members, “@carosmacks” was found to be “promoting racist and extremely inappropriate comments,” according to a statement from the team.
After ejecting this player from the roster, their scrambling for a replacement member led them into even choppier waters.
Now-released Discord DMs show one of the Cerise team members coordinating with a friend, “@dsylexic”, to have him pretend to identify as nonbinary in order to fill the open slot in the explicitly male-exclusive league.
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This may have never even been caught if they hadn’t doubled down on controversy.
The team was flagged by Riot Games’ anti-cheating software after their very next match, disqualifying them from the league. Apparently, all signs pointed to the new undercover team addition.
Their opponents, CLG Red, advanced immediately:
— VALORANT Champions Tour NA (@valesports_na) October 9, 2022
The Juwanna-wannabe then posted a twitlonger statement, at once admitting the gender deception and denying the cheating allegations. He alleged that he’d simply been in a lobby with someone using the offending software.
At least he was honest?:
forgiveness
Read: https://t.co/Rekg4SDy22
— dsylexic (@1dsylexia) October 10, 2022
Almost honest, that is. An independent anti-cheating initiative on Twitter pretty quickly identified him as an active customer in a cheating software selling channel.
They caught him in 4K:
? https://t.co/xLA3GGARGw pic.twitter.com/eVaGxEOkJ5
— Anti-Cheat Police Department (@AntiCheatPD) October 10, 2022
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The chaser to this whole shot might be the players’ attitudes following all this coming out. Somehow, after fitting ten pounds of mess in a five pound bag, a Cerise member still found the audacity to say “we would have won the match anyways.”
No contrition, no reflection, just vibes:
I’m going on record to flat-out deny this. Our game against CLG was extremely close. The player in question who allegedly was using 3rd party software was bottom fragging that map. If it does come out that my teammate was cheating that sucks. We would have won the match anyways. https://t.co/aMTjDCC0eK
— Amber (@AmberKittyUwU) October 9, 2022
It’s doubtful the VCT scene will be seeing any of these players any time soon.