Former pro, commentator, and streamer Sean Gares has dropped his much-anticipated investigation into match fixing within VALORANT’s tier two Americas scene, titled The Dark Side of Competitive VALORANT. In the 1-hour video, Gares shows how one alleged fixer recruits players, VOD reviews a number of maps he believes show players losing on purpose, and breaks down one NA Challengers match in which he believes multiple players had cheated to win the game.
“Underperform” on purpose
After beginning the video with a brief explanation of the VALORANT tier two ecosystem, Gares reveals the identity of one of the alleged fixers who facilitated and paid for players to fix matches. Through messages leaked to Gares by current Challengers players Morgan “TEAGUE” Teague and Christopher “practo” Ryu, it’s revealed how an X user named bray — whose regular posts centre around crypto trading — would reach out to players and offer five-figure sums of money for players to “underperform”.
Explaining how to fix a result without raising any alarms, bray spoke in his messages about choosing “50/50” matches to fix, whereby it “wouldn’t look crazy” to perform poorly and lose. In such a plan where players may have agreed to throw, Bray would bet huge sums of money on their defeat and share the winnings with the players(s) who threw on his behalf.
Bray would reach out to players on X and then move the conversations to Discord once the connection had been made. Following Sean Gares’ initial posts about the presence of match fixing on May 16th, bray is seen in screenshots urging his co-conspirators to move communications to Telegram — a service known for its tight security policies.
While engaging with bray in May to find out more information about the betting ring, TEAGUE explained how “everything makes sense now” after having noticed some “crazy upsets” during the ongoing NA Challengers split. Bray responded by directly naming Prosperity Esports and Burger Boyz as examples.
While also playing along with bray’s advances earlier this month, practo is shown asking the alleged fixer for more information on how the scheme would work, to which bray sent a number of redacted screenshots showing some of his betting slips. These included a map 2 loss, placed during a match in which his chosen team was leading 5 rounds to 3 with a 1-0 map lead. He placed a bet of more than $130k dollars at odds of 1.72, winning $230k and securing a $100k profit.
Persistence and brazenness
After practo ultimately rejected the proposition, bray is seen asking for potential referrals and offering a split of future profits with other players practo is able to recruit. Bray then asked practo to delete all messages and reconnect “whenever you want to be driving a Lambo”.
Even after Sean Gares’s May 16th posts, bray is alleged to have continued to push for players to fix matches. Screenshots show him messaging practo to ask if he’s had a change of heart ahead of Burger Boyz’ NA Challengers playoff match with Ambrosia on May 19th. He offered $40k for a Burger Boyz map 1 loss, and another $10k if they were able to turn around and win 2-1. Screenshots show practo rejecting bray’s requests once again.
Bray continued to push practo in the alleged messages, insisting they speak on Telegram or via voice call in case practo is worried about potential leaks. Bray is also shown in screenshots by TEAGUE asking to move communication to Telegram.
VOD reviews and potential cheats
Later in his video, Gares goes through replays of an NA Challengers match between Burger Boyz and Blue Otter, accompanied by screenshots showing $30k worth of bets on both an individual map win for BURG as well as for a 2-0 result.
Replays show BLUE players frequently pushing angles and walking through enemy utility recklessly, sometimes with their knives out, as well as missing what could be perceived as easy shots.
Much of Gares’ analysis focuses around Blue Otter players Adam “Fair” Elheroun Bob “Bob” Tran. Bob plays for both Blue Otter in the NA Challengers league as well as FlyQuest RED in the Game Changers circuit, while Fair also appears in collegiate competitions.
The duo followed up their loss to Burger Boyz with matches for their respective other teams, not appearing again for Blue Otter and having seemingly no practise time until their next BLUE match against Shopify Rebellion Black, the team for which Gares is general manager and a match which he costreamed live.
After losing the opening map, Blue Otter would eventually win the series, and Gares explained how his experience watching the game made him feel uneasy and was the catalyst for his investigation into potential cheaters within the scene.
His video highlights a stark contrast in Fair and Bob’s performances against SRB in comparison to their play versus Burger Boyz. Rather than playing unusually poor, the duo instead move throughout the map in a way that often perfectly predicted their opponents’ locations, seemingly without the necessary information to have been able to do so.
They were often seen pushing towards enemy locations without using utility and without checking angles that opponents would typically have been, as well as switching sides of the map at the same time as Shopify without having been able to see evidence of the team’s positions. Their unnatural movements also involved them pushing to locations with their knives out without being punished, the implication being that they somehow knew that there were no enemies present despite the in-game situation not having provided them the information to be sure of this.
Replays also showed BLUE players lurking near what should have been unknown opponent positions, discarding other potential spots that enemies could’ve been.
While he didn’t have any proof of bets made on the match, Gares highlighted that Blue Otter had high pre-match odds of 4.80 to win the game and so any large bets on their eventual victory would’ve had substantial payouts.
Potential consequences
Towards the end of the video, Gares explained how Shopify Rebellion Black’s loss could end up having significant effects on their season. The defeat meant that they were out of playoff contention and so missed out on any circuit points for the split. Circuit points are tallied up through the year and used to qualify for Ascension — the season-ending tournament that can see teams promote to the tier one VALORANT Champions Tour.
As well as competitive consequences for both the match fixers and their opponents, those taking part in illicit activities can obviously face punishment from developer Riot Games. Gares’ video shows an email alleged to have been previously sent to Fair by Riot around suspicious in-game activity. Those found to be cheating by Riot face competitive sanctions.
There can also be legal consequences for match fixing attempts, with bribery in sporting contests illegal in the US under federal law. 18 U.S. Code § 224 states that a prison sentence of up to five years can be given to those prosecuted.
‘Whoever carries into effect, attempts to carry into effect, or conspires with any other person to carry into effect any scheme in commerce to influence, in any way, by bribery any sporting contest, with knowledge that the purpose of such scheme is to influence by bribery that contest, shall be fined under this title, or imprisoned not more than 5 years, or both.’
NA VALORANT in turmoil
It was only two weeks ago that Tyson “TenZ” Ngo leaving Sentinels was the biggest news out of North America’s VALORANT scene. Now, evidence of an underground match-fixing ring is being unearthed in realtime, all while Game Changers star Ava “florescent” Eugene is on the receiving end of sexual assault and abuse allegations.
What should be a time to celebrate the stories of a wildly competitive league, in which newly-promoted G2 propelled to miraculously become one of the world’s best teams, is overshadowed by the darker sides of an industry focused-around-and-built-to-foster careers for socially unprepared teenagers.
