Matthew ‘Nadeshot’ Haag has supposedly been blocked from livestreaming the opening day of Valorant’s upcoming beta by Riot Games, the upset 100 Thieves CEO revealed on April 5.
Despite Riot granting many 100 Thieves players, content creators, and staff access to Valorant’s closed testing period, Nadeshot appears to have accidentally ruffled some feathers in the LCS management community.
The former OpTic Gaming superstar allegedly won’t be able to livestream the first day of Valorant’s upcoming beta on Twitch throughout April 7, with Riot demanding he play off-stream instead.
“Matt, why do you sound so down?” fellow Twitch streamer Dennis ‘Cloakzy’ Lepore asked early in an April 5 Warzone broadcast. “Nah bro, I’m just pissed,” Nadeshot responded soon after. “I can’t stream Valorant on Tuesday,” he added.
After seeing the CEO play for dozens of hours through the initial behind-closed-doors testing period, Nadeshot’s peers in the League of Legends scene allegedly put their foot down, according to the 100T figurehead.
“Other LCS and LEC and LCK team owners complained I had access when they don’t have access. So Riot asked me not to stream until the next day. It’s such a long story. I’ll be playing, but I can’t stream. I’m not allowed to stream,” he revealed.
“Are you f***ing kidding me?” Cloakzy joked, comparing other team owners to the likes of petty secondary school students.
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Nadeshot will still have access to the game once the beta goes live on April 7. He just won’t be able to stream his experience live on Twitch like many others.
“I love Riot, they’re incredible. This isn’t their fault. Riot has done nothing wrong, it’s just the other owners,” he added after explaining the situation.
“I’m being penalized for being good at my job,” Nadeshot continued, seemingly disappointed he’d been barred from sharing his opening moments on the game. “It’s crazy. I can’t even begin to tell you how insane it actually is.”
Nadeshot will now apparently have to wait until day two of Valorant’s closed beta to share the experience with his 1.2 million followers on Twitch.
UPDATE April 6, 12:55PM PST: Riot Games’ Kasra Jafroodi posted a statement to Reddit, where he claimed that the reasoning behind Nadeshot and 100 Thieves not being allowed to stream the game on April 7 is to “ensure fairness” between players and esports orgs.
Quoting Kasra and some addtl. context on the whole 'esports orgs can't stream VALORANT on April 7.' Kasra/Whalen have been meticulous about speaking with as many esports orgs as possible about V. I made the request that said orgs should NOT stream V on day 1 because… [1/4] pic.twitter.com/Qg1LJjpXp9
— chris tom (@PWYFF) April 6, 2020
“One of our goals was to ensure all esports orgs around the world received access to the game at the same time so that we didn’t create a competitive advantage,” he said. “Given these teams/players were getting direct access through us, we also asked them not to stream until the 8th so our players and fans had equal opportunity on the 7th through the content creators that have already been streaming VALORANT.”
“Sometimes, there’s a blurry line between esports and content creators and in this case, we asked Nadeshot not to stream until the 8th,” he finished.
