Reports: Valorant Coach Spectator Bug Could Have Jeopardized VCT's Competitive Integrity
Cover-Credits:
Several reports have indicated that a coach spectator bug has been in Valorant since the start of 2022 in January and that it has reportedly occurred during the Valorant Champions Tour (VCT). According to reports cited by Dot Esports and Vlr.gg, there are several variations of the bug but sometimes coaches are able to see opponents move on the mini-map.
In one of the instances, the bug enables the teams’ coaches in spectator mode to see tiny yellow dots on the mini-map which allow the coaches to see where the enemies are positioned on the map.
On 30th June, Team SoloMid (TSM) Academy Coach for Valorant Theodor "in0X" Bjornsson took to Twitter to explain what the coach spectator bug looked like in-game. He wrote, “*Look at my mini map* I think this is a huge liability for tournaments and needs to be resolved ASAP since coach monitoring is really loose.”
He added that he does not know what actually triggers the coach spectator bug but hoped that it gets attention to get a priority fix. “Feel like this is even worse than the coaching bug in CS since you can see info across the entire map, although a little less accurately.”
Other coaches share their experiences about the Valorant coach spectator bug
According to Dot Esports, NRG’s coach Josh “JoshRT” Lee experienced a variation of the bug during NRG’s match against FaZe on 25th June in the North American leg of the VCT. He reportedly notified a referee for Nerf Street Gamers who was the host of the tournament. Following this, there was a long technical pause and Josh was asked to restart his game before the match continued.
Likewise, Version1 coach Ian “Immi” Harding said on Twitter that he experienced a similar bug to that of the Valorant coach spectator bug, but it was not as bad since the enemies’ positions were not updated in real-time.
According to FunPlus Phoenix Valorant coach Erik “d00mbr0s” Sandgren, who spoke to vlr.gg, the bug is reportedly related to packet loss.
Notably, this bug was acknowledged by a Riot Games employee who said that they had passed on the information internally. On 15th January, Game Designer penguin said, “Screenshots should be good enough, I'll follow up internally. Thanks!”
According to reports and multiple sources, the Valorant coach bug has occurred in official matches including the Valorant Regional League (VRL) matches in Europe.
Dot Esports also pointed out that the first two days of competition in the VCT qualifiers do not have any monitoring from a referee, most likely due to the high number of teams competing. This bug could have also affected lower-tier tournaments that do not have the resources to have referees for each team, which could result in the compromise of the competitive integrity of the tournaments.
It is important that Riot Games addresses this Valorant coach spectator bug so as to maintain the competitive integrity of VCT tournaments and smaller leagues around the world.
