Valorant streamer gets banned for “cheating” while playing at Riot headquarters

Valorant streamer, JimmyJam, was banned for “cheating” while playing a game of Swiftplay at a Riot headquarter.

When Valorant first came out, its anti-cheat system, Vanguard, received a lot of praise and backlash. For one, it is extremely effective at stopping cheaters from hacking the game through either software or hardware means.

However, to be effective it needed an unprecedented amount of access to your computer, which many were turned off by in Valorant’s early days. But as time went on, most players accepted it as a necessary evil to avoid hackers in their lobbies. But it’s not perfect.

One instance of it was hilariously captured by Valorant streamer JimmyJam, when him and fellow streamers visited a Riot HQ only to leave with a banned account.

JummyJam posted an innocuous tweet about him and fellow streamers playing a game of Swift Play while they were visiting a Riot HQ. However, barely 10 minutes after the tweet went out, he was banned.

In a video by streamer ahad uploaded on his Twitter, he showed JimmyJam’s screen showing the message cheaters get when they are caught, a simple “you have been banned from playing Valorant”.

JimmyJams banned by Riot after reportedly cheating at Valorant

Everyone else’s screens who were in the game got the ominous screen saying a cheater was detected in the game, and the match was terminated.

“JimmyJams just got [banned]” ahad stated in his video. As he shows all their other monitors with everyone in the background laughing at the situation.

JimmyJam seemed to also see the hilarity of the situation, retweeting the video, “bro I just got banned on Valorant at Riot HQ lmao how?” He would go on to give an update saying he was unbanned in an hour.

As for what caused the false ban is yet to be seen. Perhaps the streamers were invited to test something new out and the Vanguard client did not like it, or it might just be a rare case of false detection.