Well-liked Valorant streamer and former skilled participant Shahzeeb ‘ShahZaM’ Khan acquired threatening textual content messages after talking out in opposition to alleged betting exercise tied to his ranked matches.
In a sequence of tweets, ShahZaM alleged that playing on high-level Valorant ranked video games has endured for years and that people are intentionally manipulating the end result of matches by shopping for accounts to throw video games. In line with ShahZaM, repeated stories to Riot Video games have gone unaddressed.
“We’ve been coping with our ranked video games on betting web sites for a pair years now, telling Riot about it, and so they’ve continued to not do something about it till it will get thus far. Folks purchase accounts and get into our video games to throw for these bets,” he posted on X.
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ShahZam threatened with violence by alleged Valorant gamblers
ShahZaM mentioned he acknowledged that one in every of his video games was being guess on and mentioned the scenario dwell on stream. Shortly afterward, he acquired a sequence of threatening textual content messages. One message learn:“Hey there shahzam. If you don’t begin throwing this sport I’ll open loans in your title. Your social is [blanked out].”
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One other message acknowledged: “If you don’t hearken to me and cease speaking in your stream. There can be 4 males with AR-15s at your door. We’re outdoors watching you.”
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The sender hoped to intimidate ShahZaM’s by claiming to have his private info and with threats of lethal violence. ShahZaM shared the texts publicly however didn’t verify whether or not he has contacted regulation enforcement or Riot Video games’ safety crew.
The incident has renewed issues inside the Valorant neighborhood relating to the safety of high-profile gamers and the continued presence of third-party playing operations linked to dwell ranked matches. Riot Video games has not but issued a public response.
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ShahZaM is a veteran of the skilled Valorant scene and repeatedly streams ranked video games to hundreds of viewers. The threats comply with issues from streamers {and professional} gamers in regards to the influence of account boosting, match-fixing, and betting-related interference in high-ELO video games and even tier 2 skilled matches.
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