This is not the first time that the Valoran community has accused Riot Games of treating other divisions other than VCT terribly, despite all the statements and statements to that effect. But as it turns out, the situation on the Challengers Tier 2 stage is much worse, as reported today by well-known commentator and trainer Sean “sgares” Gares.

What is known about the situation

A few hours ago, Sean “sgares” Gares, who is now the General Manager at Shopify Rebellion Black, surprised the Valorant community with an important announcement. He released a short video on his social media, in which he began to talk about the actual situation on the Challengers scene in the American region.

The main thing, and what we are talking about, is the state of Tier-2 Valorant in North America. Yes, everything is in a terrible state: contract matches, fraud, underground gambling schemes. People are making hundreds of thousands of dollars from these rigged games.

Also, after this video, sgares together with the founder and director of the Funhaver team, mrfunhaver, held a joint stream on Twitch, during which they shared many interesting details about the Tier 2 Challengers scene. Here are the main points to note:

• Riot Games does not pay attention to the Challengers league, which is why organizations do not fulfill their obligations to players. For example, M80 has been in arrears with its players for more than a year. And the lesser-known QoR team did not say goodbye to one of the players for a long time because he was a relative of one of the club's management.

• The prevalence of match-fixing. Teams are offered large sums of money for losing, and some of them agree because they have no other income.

• Riot anti-cheat employee receives money for not banning cheaters

These are just a few of the points that can be considered the most important, and which directly hint at the state of affairs of the Challengers scene. Sgares himself promised more information next week.

I have proof in many cases, and it's disgusting. That's the way it is. So stay tuned - next week will be something explosive.

Other regions

Although all of the above was about the American region, the situation is similar across the entire tier-2 scene. The PRX admirer account also published some unpleasant facts about what is happening in South Asia. He claims that the tournament operator NODWIN is either completely incompetent because it does not see cheaters or simply covers them up.

VCL South Asia is a mess. Here's what's going on:
Known cheaters and windrunners are still playing. Some of them have even made it to the VCL. Others keep showing up at open qualifiers, but there are still no bans.
Everyone on the scene knows who they are. This is outright windrunning/fraud.
Nodwin administrators were watching the cheater play live and couldn't even notice him. It was obvious: either they don't know or they are protecting someone.
There is a political overtone in every decision. If you don't have connections, you're screwed. If you do, you can get away with anything.
The rebellion has to intervene. This is no longer the way to the pros - it's a system that protects cheaters and punishes legitimate players.
Change the admins and please give us a better T/O who cares about the scene, not someone who just doesn't care about what's going on.

But as commenters have pointed out, he hasn't provided any evidence to back up his claims, so it's not confirmed information yet. Riot Games, in turn, has not yet reacted to these statements, so we will only wait and watch the situation on the Challengers stage of Valorant.