"It was not fair, so we didn’t play": Euphoria explains why VLT forfeited Valorant Penta Pro Series

Velocity Gaming manager Adarsh “EupHorIa” Singh explained why VLT forfeited the Valorant Penta Pro Series, which was held from December 12 to 24, 2022. He stated the overall unfairness of the tournament as the main reason.

His comments came after the Indian Valorant community was rife with discussions around the decision by the Indian esports organization.

EupHorIa said that he had flagged the idea of having to play in the playoffs on Singaporean Valorant servers when VLT received the invitation but didn’t feel comfortable going all out as they had not yet made their way into the playoffs stage.

“When we got the invite … that had mentioned the Singapore server is where they want us to play … the entire playoffs will be on the Singapore server … having not qualified for the playoffs, I didn’t have the right to pressurize them also”

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“I had raised the objection, but I was the only one who did so”: VLT EupHorIa on raising the issue, but not receiving support from other Valorant teams

Singh noted that he was the only one raising these objections. He recognized that one of the problems with the Valorant esports community in India is that most teams did not go through the rules or how the event was set to progress.

He further criticized the structure of the event:

“I had issues with the structure also. In a span of five days, we faced the same team thrice: in two best of threes and one best of five … It's funny we played the Upper Bracket Finals but didn’t have an advantage in the Grand Finals.”

These concerns were earlier raised by VLT's other Valorant players, such as Karan “Excali” Mhaswadkar and Sagnik “hellff” Roy, who took to Twitter to express their grievances:

EupHorIa explained in detail what happened during the playoffs. As the games were being played on the Singapore server, it became difficult for Indian players playing from India, on significantly higher pings, to match up to the South East Asian teams when it came to aim duels.

“Why don’t we do a toss and we play one map on their server and one map on our server … just like how we did for the earlier VCTs … but they did not make it happen.”

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Fans on Youtube react to EupHorIa’s statements about VLT forfeiting from Penta Pro Series

Supporters of the team and the Indian esports community backed the VLT manager:

“Winning or losing should not be a issue. The production should make concrete and fair rules from the start and stick to it. And people who are saying that vlt is not gonna win either way are absolute idiots. BTW I am an idiot😂” - @anishsahu3102

“winning losing is different thing but ya matches should be fair” - @sahiLfps

“Everything aside but RNT VS VLT wale match mein Mumbai server use krlete” - @dhawaldeshmukh5617

EupHorIa expressed his disappointment with Penta Esports for not being supportive towards teams from their own region, and instead handing the advantage to South East Asian teams in the finals.

The community believes such matters could damage the growing esports ecosystem in the country. Hopefully, such issues will be avoided going into the VCT Challengers and Ascension Leagues in 2023.