We’re disabling the Competitive queue while we work to fix an exploit that bypasses the flash effect from Agent abi… https://t.co/spa05WHdLC
— VALORANT (@PlayVALORANT) 1660153344000
Moreover, Riot Games also shared a tweet from Valorant’s official Twitter account to announce disabling the competitive queue until the issue is patched. However, the report mentions that Riot Games has fixed the exploit and turned the competitive queue back on. The blind effect on flashes is no longer turned off when the user interface is hidden, the report claims.
Why this issue forced Valorant to shut down its competitive queue
As per the report, this bug attracted a lot of attention after a Valorant player posted a video about this exploit. This issue allowed players to completely negate the effects of any flash ability from an ally or enemy. Players were able to do this by going to general settings during a match, scrolling down to the Other category, and turning on “Hide User Interface In Game.”
Enabling this setting hid the entire interface, including — mini-map, agent icons, abilities and health, as well as chat. Apart from that, turning on this setting also negated any flash effect which thoroughly broke the game and allowed players to hold angles where they can remain completely unblinded by flashes.
The report was unable to share any information on whether this bug also negated effects like nearsighted or concussed and how long was the exploit abused by players in the competitive queue. However, Riot Games quickly responded to the game-breaking bug by bringing down the competitive queue within two hours of the release of the video posted by the player.
