Ninjas in Pajamas and G2 Esports have secured their place at the WePlay! Valorant Invitational playoffs. The aforementioned teams have risen to the top two spots to secure their position in the playoffs.
Two more spots are still left before the main event of single-elimination round kicks off. The contenders for the remaining two spots include Fish123, Need More DM, Nolpenki and Party Parrots. The low matches are supposed to conclude today after an inevitable delay due to cheating allegations. The finals will take place on Sunday, 19th of July in a best of three round to claim the first prize from a prize pool of $50,000.
Earlier in the tournament, there had been cheating allegations of Nolpenki, a professional Lithuanian esports team who paved their way no the tournament via the open qualifiers. As soon the allegations surfaced, Riot took immediate action and passed the tournament while they looked deeper into the matter.
The official words of the Riot representative quoted “During the WePlay! Invitational, we received credible allegations of a team cheating and escalated the issue to our anti-cheat team who is currently reviewing the pertinent matches. We asked the organizer to temporarily pause the tournament and hold the results while we evaluated the possibility of replaying portions of the bracket.”
Riot has been closely monitoring Valorant professional tournaments to keep the cheaters at bay. A dedicated anti-cheat team has been established within the development team to make sure that not only the professionals but the casuals aren’t engaging in unlawful practices. After thorough investigations, no proof of foul play was found and subsequently, the tournament was resumed, with Nolpenki’s scores in place. Host James Banks further confirmed that there wasn’t any foul play.
Out of the six invited teams, two of the pro team including Prodigy and forZe have been eliminated while Ninjas in Pajamas and G2 have advanced to playoffs. Party Parrots and Prodigy, another set of invited teams, are still in the game. Need More DM and Nolpenki have paved their way through the open qualifiers to compete with the top teams.
You can catch the WePlay! Valorant Invitational of WePlay’s official Twitch channel where the tournament will be broadcasted in both Russian and English. The participants will likely stream the tournament on their own respective Twitch channels as well.