Ninja under fire after accusing rival Valorant team of cheating

Tyler ‘Ninja’ Blevens has come under fire after Valorant team Built By Gamers (BBG) were temporarily disqualified from the Knights Before Christmas Invitational amid accusations of cheating. The accusations came after BBG beat Ninja’s team, Time In, 2-0.

Accusations were made after a clip of BBG’s Tristan ‘Critical’ Trinacty supposedly ‘locking on’ to a Time In player was circulated. On the basis of this clip, tournament organizers Pittsburgh Knights initially announced BBG would be disqualified while the allegations were fully investigated, with Time In advancing to the quarterfinals.

However, the ban has since been overturned, meaning Time In will no longer be playing in the next round of the tournament, and BBG will now be progressing instead.

But that’s not the end of it. Many members of the community are disgruntled with the overall handling of the situation, with the Pittsburgh Knights taking the brunt of the criticism. Rod ‘Slasher’ Breslau accused the decision to disqualify BBG as being “hasty.”

“The only people that can decide if someone is cheating is Riot, not us armchair analysts going over 15-second clips like we’re flushaholics trying to chase our next high,” he said.

Ninja under fire

While Pittsburgh Knights are facing a wave of criticism, Ninja is also taking a large amount of heat, including for comments made about Critical. Ninja suggested the investigation was justified because of three previous cheating allegations made against Critical.

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Critical had been subsequently cleared of all cheating allegations.

It’s fair to say Ninja’s comments haven’t gone down too well with some members of the community. Popular streamer THump condemned Ninja for mentioning Critical’s previous accusations, as the BBG pro had been cleared of them.

He said: “First 3 times he was cleared by riot, who has a lot more information than we do. So the previously 3 accusations shouldn’t factor in to this decision whatsoever.”

“You cannot DQ people from tournaments based on this type of evidence that has been put forward. It opens yourself up to tons of future accusations by losing teams and DQs happening left and right. Where does it end?”

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Meanwhile, FaZe’s Charles ‘Hoppin’ Clapper accused the organizers of bowing to pressure from Ninja to disqualify BBG. He said: “The tournament organizers be like ‘there is an on-going investigation but ninja told us he thought they were cheating so let’s dq them’.”

Critical later thanked everyone who defended him over the accusations.