Valorant Champions is already helping develop strong regional rivalries, particularly Brazil against North America, all stemming from a series of controversial mishaps that occurred during the first couple of days of action.
If you've missed it, the biggest upset was actually caused by Riot themselves, after they decided to punish Vivo Keyd's usage of an illegal Cypher cam spot by reverting their win against Acend, later calling for a match replay instead but with the EMEA squad starting with a 7-round lead. Acend would win the replay.
Before the VK debacle, however, Sentinels played against FURIA Esports. A close affair that seemed to be going the way of the Brazilians on map 3 as they were picking up momentum was stopped in its tracks following a tech pause over a jump exploit, which ended in a simple warning.
The 15-minute pause meant that FURIA lost drive and subsequently, the match, much to the dismay of an entire region.
The fact that Jared "zombs" Gitlin poked the bear after both incidents certainly didn't help, but things escalated to a point where massive amounts of personal hate and even death threats were thrown at Acend, Sentinels, and everyone in between who slightly disagreed with Brazilian supporters.
As a result, Brazilian CS:GO legend Gabriel "FalleN" Toledo has asked fans to relax and stop antagonising fanbases around the world.
"We need to change, especially the Brazilian gamer community, from threatening and trying to make the person on the other side feel 'afraid' to punish something that was done and we don't like it. This in no way reflects our essence as a people," FalleN tweeted out.
In a follow-up tweet, the 30-year-old pointed up the general warmth, positivity, and joy the Brazilian folk are known for adding: "To defend ourselves we don't need to incite fear, violence or punish others for being wrong. We are better than that."
Brazilian teams are currently fighting to not be knocked out of Champions, with FURIA already eliminated by KRÜ, while Vivo Keyd and Team Vikings will play against X10 and Team Secret respectively.
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Featured image courtesy of CodigoEsports.