EQ Cerise player faked being nonbinary to compete in Valorant Game Changers
On Tuesday, a player who substituted for EQ Cerise during their NA VCT Game Changers Series III open qualifiers match against CLG Red known as “dyslexic” posted a TwitLonger in which he admitted that he faked identifying as nonbinary to be able to compete in Game Changers. This admission was part of a larger post that denied the accusations and ruling from Riot that dyslexic was using a third-party software to cheat during this match.
“On September 8th, I messaged Jenni (@/nabiichuval) with a terrible joke of a hypothetical ‘what if I faked non-binary and played in GC’ (as a he/him identifying person),” dyslexic wrote in his post. “Jenni wasn’t hesitant about the idea [link to screenshot] and she was able to arrange a trial position (after the Caro incident) with EQ Cerise as their substitute player for their match against CLG Red, to which I agreed without ever thinking of the consequences of what we were doing. I want to emphasize that nobody else at EQ Cerise knew that I was faking my non-binary status to play in Game Changers besides Jenni.”
The “incident” with caro (also known as carosmacks) that dyslexic mentioned in his post was that EQ Cerise apparently found out that caro – who was originally on the roster set to compete in Series III – was “promoting racist and extremely inappropriate comments that we simply do not condone here at EQ Cerise,” according to a separate TwitLonger posted by Jenni about the situation. Because of this behavior, caro was taken off the roster and EQ Cerise needed a substitute, which is apparently where dyslexic came into the picture. Jenni’s TwitLonger post does not address dyslexic’s gender identity, but does emphasize that the team doesn’t support cheating of any kind.
“As a final note to close this out, I would like to emphasize that we do not condone cheating nor do we support people who think cheating is okay,” Jenni wrote. “We were completely unaware and feel like we have been completely blindsided by how things have been transpiring these past two days.”
Based on the screenshots in dyslexic’s post, it does appear that Jenni knew he would be lying about his gender identity to compete with EQ Cerise in Game Changers and still encouraged him to do so. She later confirmed this herself in another TwitLonger post.
“Everything that @1dsylexia claimed I did in his twit longer is true,” she wrote. “I entertained his idea of pretending to be non-binary in order to compete and helped him sub in for my previous team during VCT. I know now how awful what we did was. I should’ve shut down the idea immediately and moved on, but I didn’t. I am sorry to anyone and everyone I have hurt with the terrible decision I made.”
To participate in the VCT Game Changers Series III Open Qualifiers, players had to go through a verification process via the Galorants Discord server where they were asked to join the server and submit a selfie with the Galorants server clearly in the background, and a note with “Galorants” and their Discord ID written on a piece of paper. The selfies were not allowed to have filters or be photoshopped in any way. Based on these rules, dyslexic would have been able to submit all of these materials as a lie with Jenni’s knowledge as the team captain.
With this information revealed, EQ Cerise’s disqualification from NA VCT Game Changers Series III would be sealed regardless of any appeals the team made in terms of the third-party software cheating allegations, as this is still going against the rules and spirit of Game Changers, which is to create a space for folks of marginalized genders (i.e. not cisgender men) to compete in Valorant without the same gender-based hurdles they normally have to face.
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