Riot Games announced Saturday that Team Turtle Brains are disqualified from the North American Valorant Game Changers event for using unauthorized communication during matches.
Apparently, Team Turtle Brains violated this rule during their match with team Invicta, Riot said in a statement.
“Any communication between non-players and players during a match is prohibited outside of designated Tactical and Technical Pauses,” Riot said. “All players are expected to abide by the rules of fair play that they agreed to uphold prior to participating in the tournament.”
The competitive operations team gathered evidence of a non-competitor of the Valorant game providing instruction while the game was ongoing. According to Riot, the rule the team broke falls under Section 7.2.9 of the Valorant Global Competition Policy. This rule covers all unauthorized communications.
A part of the rules states that “During the match, communication by a player shall be limited to other players on the Team.” As a result of this violation, Team Turtle brains were immediately disqualified from participating in the VCT North American Game Changers Series one. The team were actually disqualified earlier today but had not received official communication from Riot as to why.
One of the team members, Juliaaiis “Juju” posted on the issue with no further information.
Reaction to Team Turtle Brains Valorant disqualification
In a response to the decision, one of the players on Team Turtle Brains, Morgan “Morgee” took to Twitter to state what happened. She believed the decision to disqualify their team from this event was unfair; the external communication was from their assistant coach who gave them some advice.
“We didn’t stream-snipe or anything serious” Morgee said on Twitter. “We were in it for fun and experience. Our assistant coach gave us a suggestion, and we used it, and it worked.”
This disqualification comes just a day after another roster shift for the tournament. TSM decided to part ways with a member of its women’s Valorant roster for the same event.
Team Turtle Brain made it to Day 3 of the event before getting disqualified. Their journey at the event comes to an end without an opportunity to earn a part of the prize pool. The team will be able to play in the next Game Changers Series as the disqualification does not limit their entry into the next one.
The VCT Game Changers series will end on March 29 with a $50,000 prize pool up for grabs.
