Riot Bans Valorant's EU Player Nisay for 12 months on Cheating charges

Riot has banned Valorant’s top gamer Nisay for 12 months on grounds of cheating and his contract with Beşiktaş Esports has been terminated

What can the use of third-party software do to a player you ask? Valorant’s top EU player learnt this the hard way as he now stares at a 12-month ban on doing exactly the same.

What led to Riot banning Nisay in Valorant?

Riot games has banned player Yasin ‘Nisay’ Gök for a period of 12 months from participating in Valorant games as a part of his team Beşiktaş Esports. Following an official investigation, his contract was also terminated.

Riot had its eyes on Nisay for a while and post cheating allegations on the player he was de-ranked from Radiant to Immortal. This was apparently a precursor to more stringent measures against the top player, which culminated in today’s announcement.

Nisay’s argument against Riot

The former Valorant player has challenged Riot’s decision, claiming innocence. Riot Games and the official Turkish VCT accounts are yet to respond to his claims even as his name has been struck off the leaderboard.

Ban olayi

Read: https://t.co/gXgWyIGL3v

— Yasin Gök (@nisayFPS) February 4, 2021

This news was confirmed by Twitter’s Anti-cheat Police Department account, which independently verifies cheating claims across Valorant games for ranked and professional players.

Blaming community pressure for this hasty act by Riot, Nisay mentioned that if the developers had found any solid evidence against him, his ban would have been permanent.

He further claims that his account has not been banned from normal play, which is the regular course of action once a cheater is banned by Riot’s Vanguard anti-cheat system.

Authenticity of Riot’s anti-cheat system

Off-late, Riot has gone hard against cheaters across its gaming platforms via Valorant’s anti-cheat mechanism.

While many claimed the measure to be arbitrary and outright invasive, what cannot be denied is that Valorant has managed to ensure zero frauds in many of its events after this rule was implemented.

A chink in Valorant’s anti-cheat armour however, is the fact that Indian pro Valorant player Xhade was banned permanently a few days back on similar grounds of cheating in a ranked game.

Nisay seems lucky to evade a perma-ban, but this disproportionate judgement does leave questions unanswered.