100 Thieves has responded critically to Riot Games’ competitive ruling after the team was fined $5,000 for non-compliance and head coach Hector ‘FrosT’ Rosario placed on probation for “unprofessional behaviour towards a tournament official.”
The situation originally arose as 100 Thieves was preparing to begin its Valorant Champions Tour Stage 1 Masters quarterfinal match against Immortals. As is procedure, tournament officials then picked from one of two servers that were “most equidistant to both teams” to host the match. However, according to 100 Thieves’ Twitter statement, Immortals ended up with a ping advantage – the second time that an opposing team had been granted such a decision. This would also give Immortals peeker’s advantage.
In response to this, FrosT contacted a tournament official to dispute the decision. According to Riot’s statement, he “refused to accept the decision from the tournament official and treated the tournament official in an unprofessional manner.” Furthermore, Riot also reports that FrosT “threatened to leverage players’ social media platforms against the tournament organiser and Riot Games as a response.” The entire fiasco delayed the match by over an hour and 100 Thieves was deemed to have broken three separate VCT rules.
Following the ruling, 100 Thieves states that the latter part of Riot’s statement is completely untrue, calling it a “mischaracterisation of the incident”, which it believes was a “minor competitive matter” and didn’t require the scale of response it has subsequently received.
100 Thieves went on to release footage showing FrosT in a heated discussion the tournaments officials.
During the footage, at no point is there a direct threat from 100 Thieves to use its social media platforms against Riot. FrosT does however say to the tournament official that Riot would be in a “shitstorm” if 100 Thieves were disconnected from the match.
A statement regarding the VALORANT competitive ruling: pic.twitter.com/EgIZeAIZFv
— 100 Thieves Esports (@100T_Esports) March 23, 2021
In a later update to its competitive ruling, Riot says it has received testimony from three witnesses that claim FrosT did make a direct statement about using 100 Thieves’ social media presence, and that the coach has admitted to saying such a statement to Riot. It says the clip posted by 100 Thieves does not include that specific statement.
100 Thieves is now looking to put the matter to rest. “We plan to pay our fine and move on from this matter,” the statement reads. “We feel our coach was fighting for our players and fans in advocating for competitive integrity. We’re moving forward and our sole focus is on improving our team’s performance for the upcoming Valorant tournaments.”
With FrosT on competitive probation, any future infringement of the VCT’s rulebook could land him with suspensions or bans.
Although 100 Thieves fell to eventual VCT Stage 1 Masters champions Sentinels, the team will get another shot at making Champions when Stage 2 kicks off next month.
