Valorant team Built By Gamers (BBG) was temporarily disqualified from the Knights Before Christmas Invitational after being accused of cheating during their match against Time In, the Valorant team of Tyler 'Ninja' Blevins, 2-0. Now, the popular Twitch streamer is under fire for the accusations.
Accusations were made after a clip of BBG's Tristan "Critical" Trinacty possibly locking onto a Time In player was shared around social media, and as more people voiced concerns that Critical might be cheating, tournament organizers Pittsburgh Knights initially announced BBG would be disqualified from the Knights Before Christmas Invitational, with Ninja's team advancing to the quarterfinals.
However, the decision has been overturned, so Time In will no longer advance to the quarterfinals, and BBG will be playing in the next round instead.
Members of the Valorant community criticized Pittsburgh Knights for their initial decision to disqualify BBG with esports insider Rod "Slasher" Brelsau calling them "hasty", stating that only Riot Games can decide if Critical is a cheater, not fans on social media.
"The only people that can decide if someone is cheating is Riot, not us armchair analysts going over 15-second clips like we're flushaholics trying to chase our next high," Slasher said.
Over on Twitter, Ninja supported Pittsburgh Knights' decision to act on the cheating allegations even after BBG was cleared, suggesting that the decision was justified because of thee previous cheating allegations made against Critical.
Fortnite pro Alex "AlexJJ" Campbell said that Critical shouldn't have been disqualified until Riot examines the clip, but Ninja disagreed.
"Just going to use your logic real quick. You are saying that if there are suspicions of someone cheating (for the fourth time) in a tournament for money, don't do anything until after, even though they knocked out several deserving teams unfairly? After the fact?" Ninja wrote."
The Valorant community quickly condemned Ninja's response with popular streamer THump criticizing Ninja for mentioning Critical's previous accusations, as the BBG member had been cleared of them.
"First 3 times he was cleared by riot, who has a lot more information than we do," THump said. "So the previously 3 accusations shouldn't factor in to this decision whatsoever."
"You cannot DQ people from tournaments based on this type of evidence that has been put forward. It opens yourself up to tons of future accusations by losing teams and DQs happening left and right. Where does it end?"
Meanwhile, a Valorant fan said that disqualifying Critical without Riot's investigation would inspire teams to start accusing each other "left and right" in hopes of them getting disqualified from events.
FaZe's Charles 'Hoppin' Clapper accused Pittsburgh Knights of bowing to pressure from Ninja to disqualify BBG, saying: "The tournament organizers be like ‘there is an on-going investigation but ninja told us he thought they were cheating so let's dq them'." Others stated that Ninja's large following ended up persuading the tournament organizers to make the make the decision.
Critical thanked everyone who defended him over the cheating accusations, and while BBG tweeted that they're thankful for the "quick resolution", the team already decided to drop out of the tournament to prepare for upcoming events.
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