The 100 Thieves Valorant team has been fined $5,000 for a “delay of game” and had their coach Hector ‘FrosT’ Rosario suspended for “unprofessional behavior towards a Tournament Official” after their VCT Masters match against Immortals.
Riot announced a fine and actions taken against 100 Thieves on Sunday, March 21, following the conclusion of the biggest Valorant esports event to date, the VCT Stage 1 Masters.
According to the company, this all stems from the 100 Thieves vs. Immortals Upper Bracket Quarterfinals game on March 12, where a dispute over player ping delayed the start of the match by an hour.
At the time, the delay was attributed to technical problems, but after the tournament ended Riot came out with an official ruling that, according to them, all started when 100 Thieves disagreed with tournament organizers about what was an acceptable level of ping.
Competitive ruling against 100 Thieves
“100 Thieves disagreed with the Tournament Official’s choice of servers,” the March 23 ruling outlined. “100 Thieves members entered the in-game shooting range in order to prevent Tournament Officials from initiating game start in the VALORANT client.
“FrosT joined a Discord voice channel to speak with the Tournament Official and attempt to argue for a change to the server decision. During this time, FrosT refused to accept the decision from the Tournament Official and treated the Tournament Official in an unprofessional manner.”
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They went on to claim that when 100 Thieves head coach FrosT was told they could be disqualified for this. He allegedly hit back with a threat to turn the 100T Valorant players’ social media accounts against Riot and the organizers.
“FrosT threatened to leverage players’ social media platforms against the Tournament Organizer and Riot Games as a response. A Riot Games employee entered the channel and reiterated the server decision, the rationale behind the decision, and the finality of the decision,” the report continuesd. “100 Thieves players proceeded to leave the shooting range and allow Tournament Officials to begin the series, after a delay to the start of the game of approximately an hour.”
A competitive ruling has been made on 100 Thieves. Read more: https://t.co/jDO9Q1OCte
— VALORANT Esports NA (@valesports_na) March 23, 2021
As a result, the First Strike Champions will be getting fined $5,000 and FrosT will be “placed on probation for the duration of the 2021 VALORANT Champions Tour for unprofessional behavior towards a Tournament Official.”
This means if the coach breaks any of the NA Valorant Champions Tour rules during this period, he could receive a temporary ban.
100 Thieves respond to the ruling
Following the ruling, 100 Thieves came out with their own statement a few hours later disagreeing with Riot’s decision.
“We disagree with Riot’s competitive ruling against our VALORANT head coach FrosT and strongly disagree with Riot’s public release and mischaracterization of the incident after we complied with their investigation,” the statement reads. “We were blindsided by the characterization of this issue and feel as if it has been blown out of proportion.”
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A statement regarding the VALORANT competitive ruling: pic.twitter.com/EgIZeAIZFv
— 100 Thieves VALORANT (@100T_VAL) March 23, 2021
The Thieves also Tweeted out purported video evidence of their end of the interaction with Riot before the match on March 12.
In it, FrosT can be heard telling Riot “You’ll be in a bigger s****storm than we are,” but he didn’t appear to make making any references to social media as the company claimed.
https://twitter.com/100T_Esports/status/1374504898054680586?s=20
100 Thieves added that they’ve paid the $5,000 fine and plan to move on from the matter, but still support their head coach in how he challenged the ruling by tournament staff.
Just after the esports club’s statement came out, FrosT put his own statement out on Twitter via a series of Tweets, where he echoed his team’s statement and said he was let down by being “mischaracterized” as well.
Riot’s updated statement following 100 Thieves video
Hours after the video from 100 Thieves went out, Riot issued an update to their statement.
“Three independent witnesses provided testimony that FrosT made a statement to this effect,” the updated post outlined. “When asked directly about it in an interview by Riot League Operations personnel, FrosT admitted that he made this statement.”
While the organization provided a clip to Riot, presumably the same clip shared online, “they declined to provide the full video to Riot.”
Stick with Dexerto for all the latest updates on this story as they happen.