Sentinels receive death threats following Valorant Champions tech pause caused by "exploit"

As FURIA Esports was building up steam for a potential upset against Sentinels in map 3 of their match during the group stage of Valorant Champions, a crucial and delayed tech pause when the score favoured the North American squad 12-9 ended up killing the Brazilians momentum. 

With the last round played following a 15-minute break, Riot Games explained to both squads the reason behind the tech pause -- an exploit performed by FURIA player Alexandre "xand" Zizi.

According to Riot, xand utilised a jumping exploit on the Haven C site to climb a seemingly unreachable box, unless he used his Jett ability, Updraft. Fellow Duelist player Tyson "TenZ" Ngo defended xand, claiming that tech can be performed with every Agent in the game. 

"That's not an exploit since it's a skill jump that can be done with any character, so [I don't know] why they paused for so long," he wrote via Twitter. 

Also for tech pause, Riot paused the game because they said that Furia did an exploit by jumping ontop of the C box without updraft. IMO thats not an exploit since its a skill jump that can be done with any character so idk why they paused for so long

— TenZ (@TenZOfficial) December 2, 2021

xand expressed his discomfort after the match. The former CSGO player was only handed out a warning, which puzzled him due to how long it took for such a preemptive measure. "It was 15 minutes just to let me know that it is something I shouldn’t have done," he said according to Upcomer. 

Sentinels receive death threats 

Many people believed the tech pause was somehow called by Sentinels as FURIA had won five rounds in a row and were picking up momentum and a more stable economy, looking to cool them off.

What sparked even more controversy and anger from Brazilian fans was Keyd Stars' Gabriel "v1xen" Martins tweet pointing that Shahzeb "ShahZaM" Khan was allegedly allowed to use the bathroom during the pause, something that was forbidden when such occasions occurred at Masters Berlin.

"They tech-paused and let Shazam go take a piss, in Masters in our game vs KRÜ, they didn't let Heat go," he tweeted out. Later, when TenZ politely requested fans to stop sending death threats to him and his teammates, v1xen quickly apologised. 

In that case the split mid box jump would also be considered an exploit because it uses the same method, plz don’t send hate DM’s to my teammates for something RIOT did

— TenZ (@TenZOfficial) December 2, 2021

"If that was it, then I apologise, I'm so sorry," v1xen replied.

Sentinels ultimately won the match by 2-1 and are set to face Team Liquid for a spot in the final bracket; meanwhile, FURIA will play against KRÜ Esports to avoid an early exit from Champions.

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Featured image courtesy of Riot Games.