Valorant: Riot can ban you for accidentally disconnecting from a game but not for intentionally throwing one or griefing

There are a lot of problems with Valorant’s matchmaking and penalty system at the moment. The competitive or even the non-competitive grind doesn’t exactly reward you for all your hard work and effort, especially if you get teammates who intentionally throw the game.

And this particular problem is not just an isolated incident in a particular elo. Unlike the age-old smurfing and boosting tactics which are restricted to the lower and mid-tier ranks, griefers in Valorant transcend every elo barrier, and you can meet them on any match and in any rank.

Frankly, the Valorant community is not exactly seeing any sort of viable punishment for such players. There are no consequences for throwing a game no matter how many times the griefers get reported.

There are no consequences for griefing or trolling in Valorant

In a recent Reddit post, a Valorant player who goes by the handle of iwillgeta168, throws some much-needed light on the recurring match-throwing issues that Riot Games’ shooter is enduring at the moment.

Iwillgeta168 writes:

“I’ve had WAY too many games with people throwing. It can go as far as live pinging us teammates to the enemy team in /all chat. It’s extremely annoying and discouraging, but lately I’ve came across people complaining that no matter how many players report the thrower doesn’t get any real consequences.”

This is, indeed, some troubling information to process for any Valorant fan, and what makes it scarier is the fact that it’s true.

This post has an 84% upvote, and the majority of the comments in the thread actually testify to this issue, which is plaguing Valorant more than hacking or even smurfing.

A ‘griefer’ is one who deliberately provokes or harasses the other players in an attempt to spoil their enjoyment, and that is exactly what some of the trollers seem to be doing. In a follow-up comment, a Redditor writes:

“It's true, some guy tested it and posted his results on reddit after throwing 20~ games with friendly fire abilities like raze nade. He said he got muted but no other punishment. Huge vulnerability in the system that definitely needs work. Because there are so few griefers it doesn't get much exposure? Idk.”

Another follow-up comment reads:

“This is a serious issue especially guys running around with 9000 creds and not buying anything and just shooting next to you giving away your position. People like that deserve IP bans for life.”

Imagine you’re camping out on defender side hookah on Valorant's Bind, with a Judge in hand, and you can hear the enemy Attackers approaching. Then suddenly a teammate of yours starts firing the classic beside you, just to give your position away.

That is perhaps one of the most annoying experiences one can ever have in a game like Valorant, and the current penalty system in place does nothing to curb this.

One Redditor even goes as far as to say that Riot Games are probably encouraging these griefers with the Valorant system that is in place. He says:

“More importantly the focus should be on how Riot encourages throwing and does nothing to protect the playerbase. From a design standpoint all they did was give a lot of freedom and trust to the users which is great, but now they have to take that away because they can't be trusted with it. My diamond account only has a 14% win rate or something like that, i'm averaging 2-3 teammates per game throwing, i'm not upset cause i'm still pulling 30ish frags a game only reason i'm still in diamond despite a 14% win rate. Made a smurf and it's at around 71% in immortal 2. At the moment riot is transitioning the game from premade groups to solo que, it'll take a while and it won't be good for the overall health of the game but that is what is happening.”

Riot Games, indeed, have a lot of work cut out for them. They need to keep their ears close to the ground and iron out the more prevalent issues in Valorant if they want to maintain the game's competitive integrity.