After a rough VALORANT Game Changers run and unconvincing talks with Riot Games, popular streamer Disguised Toast has shared his uncertainty about investing in the circuit while revealing that his organization will not be fielding a team for the 2024 season.
In a Twitch stream on Jan. 3, talking about his plans for the future Game Changers circuits, Toast said VALORANT’s Game Changers circuit isn’t “quite there yet,” at least for the 2024 season. “Unfortunately, we’re out of the GC scene for now,” he said. “Our experience with GC in 2023 was both good and bad. Good because of the players we had and the amount of ways we made. Bad, because of what happened at GC three. And then talking with Riot after GC three made me feel like at least for this year that it’s not worth the time and effort and money to be in GC.”
For those unaware, the Disguised GC roster lost to a team named noot noot in an upper bracket match of the third series of VCT Game Changers 2023 North America qualifiers, sending them to the lower bracket. Disguised GC eventually made an exit from the tournament after losing against Evil Geniuses in the lower bracket VALORANT game.
Riot later found out that one of noot noot’s players was cheating, helping their team win several crucial games throughout their GC run. While noot noot was disqualified from the tournament with immediate effect, teams affected, including Disguised GC, were not reinstated to the competition. Noting this drama as the reason in a long tweet, Disguised announced the disbanding of its promising roster on Dec. 20, 2023.
From the sound of it, Toast discussed the situation with Riot to make it fair for his team, but the talks amounted to nothing. “After a heartbreaking ending to our GC Series 3 run this year, where a player was able to bypass Riot’s anti-cheat system in our games, we do not feel comfortable investing more into the scene as it exists today,” a particularly disheartening part of the tweet reads. “While we believe Riot will continue to strive and improve on their system, being a self-funded org like DSG, it would be better for us to wait until such a system is implemented securely.”
Despite pulling away from making an investment in the Game Changers scene this year, Toast did acknowledge that it’s a promising circuit in terms of “getting people interested in playing competitively” but reiterated that it’s “not quite there” in terms of support from Riot.
While competitive integrity is crucial in ranked VALORANT, it should be non-negotiable in esports. The fact that one of noot noot’s players could infiltrate Riot Vanguard’s celebrated anti-cheat system is quite difficult to come to terms with.
It might not be as straightforward as reinstating wronged teams to the tournament without affecting its natural course, but considering the way Riot handled it, promising organizations like Disguised hesitating to invest in the circuit seems fair enough.
