Valorant has been incredibly popular since its closed beta released earlier this April. The hype surrounding the game has been so much that during just the first month of play, there have already been numerous tournaments held. Various eSports orgs have invested a lot in creating their official Valorant rosters as well.
However, there has been a sudden turn of events in one of the tournaments in the last 24 hours. This has turned the whole progress of the Valorant competitive scene sour for many fans.
What initially seemed like confusion regarding the start time for HypHypHyp and Dafran’s team Prodigy’s semi-final match of the Valorant Solary Cup turned into something ugly moments later.
The ultimate result of this altercation lead to the former Overwatch pro and streamer Daniel ‘dafran’ Francesca’s lifetime ban from future Solary tournaments.
What exactly happened in the Valorant Solary Cup?
In the Solary Tournament Discord channel (strictly for the participants), the organizers of the cup reported a change in the time for the semi-finals.
Dafran, along with the rest of his teammates- Oscar ‘mixwell’ Cañellas, Adil ‘ScreaM’ Benrlitom, Jacob ‘Pyth’ Mourujärvi, and Bayram ‘bramz’ Ben Redjeb- completely overlooked the announcement that was made many days prior.
The Solary organizers took this as an act of tardiness from the side of Prodigy, and they were going to hand HypHypHyp a map advantage because of it.
However, this did not sit well with Dafran, and he exploded in an unpublished tweet, stating:
“F*** the Solary Tournament on Valorant.”
He even continued a rant about Damien ‘HyP’ Souville, saying:
“Bunch of cry baby b****es, doesn’t prove who is the best. Only who is favored by the French organizers.”
Things could have gotten way out of control if Prodigy’s Mixwell hadn’t stepped up and talked to HyP for rescheduling the match to some other day. But, HyP did lay out certain conditions, and they agreed to play Prodigy for the semi-finals only if Dafran wasn’t a part of the roster.
More drama ensued after this, and the Solary organizers ended up banning Dafran from all of their future competitions.
“Today the player Dafran made disrespectful remarks during our Solary Cup on Valorant,” the Solary Cup organizers said. “Dafran is banned for life from our tournaments and his team will be able to play the game tomorrow with a substitute.”
This instigated Dafran even more, and he continued his rant, this time against the tournament itself. He posted a profanity-laced tweet in which he called the Valorant Solary Cup officials a "joke". He also termed HyP and his teammates "washed up", and claimed that they were scared to play.
Was Prodigy entirely to blame for this?
This question might never get answered, but what we do know is that Prodigy claimed to have not known about the schedule, even when HypHypHyp were waiting to load onto the server.
HyP even went on to tweet his opponents, reminding them of the match:
“Semifinal is now bro. Let's go, man, we can't go above 7 PM and we can't write on your Twitch [because of the] 30 minute follow.”
Prodigy will now have to find a new player to fill Dafran’s vacant spot.