A tier-three player in the VALORANT China National Competition Season 1, a LAN event in Nanjing, China, with a prize fund of US$70,000, has been permanently banned for cheating.
The player at the centre of the dispute was a member of the CHI66 squad. Shortly after the competition, an announcement from the official VALORANT account on Weibo went viral, announcing the findings of an inquiry, which determined that a player named “” had used hardware peripherals to cheat during the VALORANT China National Competition Season 1.
The cheating incident allegedly occurred during the semi-finals on the third day of the event, when CHI66 was defeated by Team Rainy. In reaction to the ban, is now excluded from future official competitions or related activities, thus facing a lifelong ban. As a result of this disqualification, CHI66’s place as a semi-finalist has been revoked.The investigation also revealed that the remaining team members were completely uninformed of the cheating episode. According to the official statement, the other squad members took the initiative to raise concerns about the player in issue with the referee team and worked with the organisers throughout the investigation. They received no punishment.
Despite the fact that the player was relatively unknown on the scene, this episode drew a lot of interest from the Chinese VALORANT community, owing to the event being held offline in Nanjing and offering a sizable prize pool of CN500,000 (US$70,000).
The first season of the VALORANT China National Competition () included a variety of methods for players to qualify, including collegiate participation, regional qualifiers, in-game qualifying, and others.
Peng “PPQueen” Jiacheng was the event’s lone renowned player, having previously participated with Totoro Gaming in the inaugural year of VALORANT. On the other side of the table, the player involved in the cheating incident is still unknown, with very minimal information available, despite having never competed in the higher stages of VALORANT’s competitive play.
