Valorant Champions round replayed after game finish due to Killjoy bug

The playoffs match of Valorant Champions between XSET and FunPlus Phoenix ended originally with a 2-1 win to the defending Masters champions, but Riot has forced a reset of the final round after a Killjoy bug impacted the NA side. XSET ended up winning the replayed round, but ultimately lost the game in overtime.

XSET and FunPlus Phoenix played out a nail-biter on September 13 with the loser going home from Valorant Champions 2022.

However, the final round on Ascent brought controversy after a Killjoy bug misled XSET during a spike defense, with FPX’s Kyrylo ‘ANGE1’ Karasov and Andrey ‘Shao’ Kiprsky clutching up in a 2v3 to win the round and ultimately the map 13-11. This also marked the end of the series with FPX moving on.

If XSET had won the round, the NA hopefuls would have forced overtime against the defending Masters champions.

However while there was jubilation on stage for FunPlus Phoenix and despair for XSET, there was pandemonium as the bug circulated around. Pro players like Sentinels’ Shahzeb ‘ShahZaM’ Khan made note of it on Twitter, and there was talks of potentially replaying the final round.

The replay was first reported by Dexerto’s Declan McLaughlin: “One [production member] came up to press and said the round was going to be replayed. Another relayed they were looking into it after.”

This was confirmed minutes after by Riot with a statement on the Valorant Esports Twitter account.

“In the final round of the match, a bug caused the Killjoy turret to fire in the wrong direction. This resulted in false information that directly led to an XSET player looking in the wrong direction and had a high level of potential impact on XSET losing the round and match,” Riot said.

The match would be restarted at 12-11 in FPX’s favor with the same weaponry as the bugged round. By the time the round was replayed, more than an hour had elapsed since the end of the match.

XSET employed a different strategy with a fast B hit on Ascent, overwhelming FPX and actually forcing overtime. The game was then struck by a technical pause straight after.

While overtime brought a few more rounds to the game, including an insane Zachary ‘zekken’ Patrone clutch, FPX did end up winning Ascent for a second time 16-14.

XSET won the first map of the best-of-three series, beating out FPX 13-11 on their map pick of Pearl. The Europeans then traded back on Bind with another tight 13-10 score line. Ascent was the first map pushed beyond 25 rounds.