Acend won their VALORANT Champions replay match 13-10 against Vivo Keyd on Sunday after the Brazilian side was put at a seven-round deficit to start the map because their use of an exploit in their original matchup.
Riot Games ruled that the two sides would replay the match after an initial ruling that had Vivo forfeit seven rounds to the Europeans from their original scoreline, giving Acend the map and series win. Acend will move on to face Envy in the upper bracket, and Keyd fall to the lower bracket and will face X10 CRIT in the lower bracket.
Riot took an extra day for deliberations Saturday after an outpouring of support for the Keyd following the initial ruling. Brazilian fans got #justiceforkeyd trending No. 1 worldwide for a time on Twitter in protest of the decision to give the win to Acend. The Group A matchup, which would have seen Acend or Keyd take on Envy on Saturday, was canceled as Riot deliberated, and Day 4 of VALORANT Champions only featured two games.
The exploit in question is a Cypher Cam that Keyd player Jonathan “JhoW” Glória used that was in an illegal spot on Breeze. The exploit was previously used by X10 CRIT in a VALORANT Champions Tour Stage 3 matchup. X10 had to forfeit the map in their ruling.
Acend started off the map slow, letting Keyd catchup to them in round score before taking the map. Out of the five rounds left to play in the first half, Vivo won three of them and then went on a six-round win streak to start the second half, tying the score at 9-9. Acend managed to win the next three rounds, putting the map at match point, and finished off the match two rounds later.
The next two matches in Group A do not have a start date at the time of publishing. Presumably, the matches will get tacked on to another day of games causing potentially another four-match day.
