The Best Memes From The WePlay! VALORANT Invitational (So Far)
This week’s WePlay! VALORANT Invitational has been a blast so far - and not always in the ways you expect. We’ve seen copypastas, hackusations, the first-ever EU 13-0, as well as the first-ever major match to go into double overtime. Bald men wearing bandanas, one taps, graphics that look like the starting lobby from Hyper Scape, observing bugs, and more. Let’s take a look:
First off, the moment Need More DM got into their first game, we were graced with the presence of the good stuff.
Click to enlargeThis copypasta is a timeless classic, of course, and FoDa from nmDM was graced with one of the more elegant versions that a Twitch chat has ever thought up. You see, this one actually rhymed. But when fans of other teams tried to join in on the action…
Click to enlargeI don’t know how it works in Lithuania, but “orc” has never rhymed with “stomp”. Not to mention the users in the middle there who couldn’t even figure out how to copy the pasta without including the names of the degens who came before them. Shameful. Not as shameful as this, however.
Click to enlargeYou have BTTV to thank for this one. The mods in the WePlay! chat were quick to crack down on this Thomas foolery, but with my detective work from the BTTV extension, we are graced by this work of art. Don’t try this one at home, kids.
When the soda for FoDa returned, the creative geniuses in chat also tried it with this doozy:
Click to enlargeBut the mods weren’t having it either, and this is yet another archaeological discovery unearthed by the great scientists at BTTV.
On a slightly more concerning matter - there was a cheating scare at this tournament, as a game between G2 and nolpenki was delayed in order to make room for an investigation into one of the players on nolpenki (we still do not know who). The public not being aware of who the suspect actually was didn’t stop them from guessing, however, and soon Vakk, a player on nolpenki, became the prime suspect because, and I’m not making this up, his name sounds like VAC (which stands for Valve Anti Cheat, if you’re not from CS). Of course, it’s him, chat. When have you ever been wrong before?
That being said, despite no one on nolpenki actually being charged with cheating allegations, Prodigy certainly tried their hardest to make it look like they were. In EU VALORANT’s first-ever 13-0 map, nolpenki, not a particularly high-performing team, absolutely demolished Prodigy just a few hours after the cheating hubbub. Now, Prodigy is simply an agency showing off their brand new players after their entire last roster got poached, and they almost never play with the same squad, so it’s hardly fair, but good God, what a performance from nolpenki. A complete shut-out. And no, I’m not counting the time Team ONSCREEN beat Team Valkia in Twitch Rivals 13-0. We all know by now that Twitch Rivals doesn’t count, and Valkia, bless him, was a projectile DPS player in Overwatch. He probably has a 100% Raze rocket launcher accuracy, but ONSCREEN is an ex-CS pro. Team Valkia never had a chance.
- Read More - Reinventing ScreaM at the WePlay! Invitational
Another item of great interest was the graphic that showed what agents each team was selecting prior to each match. Blended seamlessly into the beautiful set, the agents appeared life-size and lifelike out of thin air as they were selected and locked in by the players. However, intentionally or not, there were no player names above or below the incredible 3D graphics, so the analysts and casters had to simply guess who was playing which agent until the broadcast cut to the game screen, which added another layer of fun as they made predictions on meta and strategy. ScreaM on Breach for the whole tournament? Who knew.
Finally, we were blessed with the glory that is the footage played in the breaks between the games. I can only assume that this tournament was marketed slightly more towards first-time viewers because the broadcast included old-school single-player game-style tooltips and tutorials in between matches, as well as hours of footage of what chat assumes, is an Iron 2 player having a go at the shooting range, parkour map, and other such features of the practice range in VALORANT. Say what you will, but this content actually turned out to be extremely engaging, as the chat had a field day roasting the poor player’s gameplay.
All that and more to come on Saturday and Sunday at the WePlay! VALORANT Invitational. Tune in at https://www.twitch.tv/weplayesport_en.
Images via WePlay! on Twitch
