The Pittsburg Knights-organised ‘Knights Before Christmas’ Valorant event has managed to make headlines in the esports world, albeit for the wrong reasons. Boasting a 10,000 USD prizepool, the event saw Tyler ‘Ninja’ Blevins’ Time In lose 2-0 to Built By Gamers in the Pre-Quater Finals, with the latter setting up a Quarters date Gen.G Esports.
However, it was soon revealed that the event organisers had taken the decision to disqualify Built By Gamers due to cheating suspicions on their Sova player, Tristan ‘Critical’ Trinacty.
The president of Pittsburg Knights, James O’Connor, revealed that they had taken the decision to issue a manual disqualification to Built By Gamers, despite also iterating that Riot had yet to confirm the accusation.
The fact that 18-year-old Critical, the player in question here, has already been cleared thrice by Riot Games prior to this, was also known to O’Connor.
Valorant and CSGO professionals came out in support of Critical, suggesting that no player deserves to get banned based on suspicions and accusations, with parallels being drawn to the Gaules-leaf drama in CSGO not too long ago.
The controversy deepened though, as O’Connor then reversed the decision to ban Critical and BBG after the clips were found to be ‘inconclusive evidence’ as per Anti-Cheat Police Department, a popular Community Discord server that have proven their ‘strong bond’ with game publishers and aided in clearing the Valorant community of several cheaters since its release.
If the decision to ban BBG and Critical based on cheating suspicions alone was bizarre and met with ridicule, O’Connor’s announcement to ‘undo’ their ban was met with hilarity within the esports community.
In his announcement highlighting their decision to unban BBG, O’Connor left the choice to play the Quarter Final against Gen.G to BBG itself, with the organisation yet to respond in the affirmative or otherwise.
All of this puts serious question marks on the ability of Pittsburg Knights to conduct tournaments successfully, especially with their handsy approach to issue the ban and then undo the ban, all based on ‘opinions’, analytical or otherwise.
It will be interesting to see how the saga unfolds and which team between Time In and BBG ends up facing Gen.G in the quarters of the 10,000 USD event.
