Valorant India Pro Player Ban: Riot Games Responds

Last week Valorant pro player Abhay ‘Xhade’ Urkude of team Paratroops had been banned by Riot Games for cheating. Despite having an India presence, Riot did not issue any statement on the matter. According to esports site AFK Gaming Riot had not made the cause of the ban known. That said, IGN India reached out to Riot Games on February 1, prior to publishing our report on the entire scenario and received a reply from the company on February 2. It claims that Xhade used “prohibited third-party software” that resulted in his account being banned.

Here’s Riot’s statement in full:

After further investigation, the player, Xhade, was found to be using prohibited third-party software. Our security software, Riot Vanguard, detected this and banned the account. The player in question accepted to have used the prohibited software and violated our code of conduct. As a result, his account will stay permanently suspended.
We at Riot promote a friendly and healthy competitive experience for our players and resorting to the use of prohibited software is against the community standards. We stand by the account suspension.

By Xhade’s own admission on his now deleted YouTube channel, he used wallhacks. This resulted in a ban during The Esports Club Invitational while he was playing for local team Paratroops. This makes Xhade the first ever Indian pro Valorant player to be caught cheating.

Soon after, tournament platform ESPL banned Paratroops along with one of its players for collusion and account sharing. This was followed by Paratroops releasing its entire roster a day later.