Riot hands 8-year ban to VALORANT pro for cheating, lying about gender identity
Another player was suspended for five years while two others were banned until October 2023
Riot Games, the developer of VALORANT, has suspended four pro players from VALORANT Game Changers for various offences, including cheating, misleading officials about their gender identity, and discriminatory remarks.
Two separate competitive rulings for Alex “Dsylexic” Luong and Jennifer “nabiichu” Choe, as well as Caroline “carosmacks” Peterson and Megan “LemonOreo” Lai, were published on Thursday (9 February).
In the ruling for Dsylexic and nabiichu, the VALORANT developer said Dsylexic had been banned from playing in any Riot-sanctioned competitive tournaments for cheating in a match against CLG Red in October.
Dsylexic suspended for 8 years due to cheating and lying about non-binary gender
According to Riot’s statement, the incident happened on 8 October 2022, when Riot’s Anti-Cheat Team detected “multiple instances” of Dsylexic using the prohibited third-party program.
EQ Cerise was consequently disqualified on 9 October.
“Dsylexic violated the VALORANT Champions Tour Global Competition Policy by using a prohibited third-party program to cheat during Competitive matches and against CLG Red,” the statement read.
In addition, the former EQ Cerise player also misled Riot officials on his gender identity and thus violated the Game Changers gender eligibility rules.
“Dsylexic and Jennifer “nabiichu” Choe misled Tournament Officials with regards to Dsylexic’s gender identity and thus breached Rule 3.9 of the VCT Game Changers Rule Set.”
The player admitted that he lied about identifying as non-binary in a public apology on 10 October.
“I want to emphasize that nobody else at EQ Cerise knew that I was faking my non-binary status to play in Game Changers besides Jenni,” said Dsylexic. “I sincerely apologise to my teammates for lying about my non-binary status to play in Game Changers."
He also apologised for “infringing on the safe environment for marginalized genders to compete”.
Dsylexic has been suspended from competitive play for a total of 8 years until 8 October 2030.
Dsylexic’s teammate nabiichu was also handed a 5-year suspension for aiding Dsylexic in deceiving Riot about his gender. Nabichuu issued her apology on 10 October.
“I entertained his idea of pretending to be non-binary in order to compete and helped him sub in for my previous team during VCT,” she said.
“I know now how awful what we did was,” she added.
As a result, she will be banned from competitive play until 8 October 2027.
Carosmacks and LemonOreo suspended for 1 year for discriminatory meme
Two more players were given suspensions, this time for “repeatedly sending a discriminatory meme to a Discord server of significant size”.
According to the competitive ruling, on 3 October, both carosmacks and LemonOreo “shared a discriminatory meme of a racist nature to a Discord server with over 70 users”.
An anonymous reported shared screenshots of the said offensive memes to Riot officials for investigation. Both players were given the opportunity to explain themselves.
“Riot Games does not condone any discriminatory acts or behaviours, including those that revolve around race, sex, age, or any other personal characteristic,” the VALORANT developer said.
Both carosmacks and LemonOreo will be banned for a year until 3 October 2023.
“Riot investigators did not find any aggravating nor mitigating factors during the course of [the] investigation.”
Anna is a freelance writer and photographer. She is a gamer who loves RPGs and platformers, and is a League of Legends geek. She's also a food enthusiast who loves a good cup of black coffee.
For more esports news updates, visit https://yhoo.it/YahooEsportsSEA and check out Yahoo Esports Southeast Asia’s Facebook page and Twitter, as well as our Gaming channel on YouTube.
