[2020] Game tell you when you are being spectated, it's unfair for streamed tournaments.

Hey JAM1B! Thanks for the report! We're aware and have a fix for this planned! We know it can provide information and compromise competitive integrity for the match. We're absolutely floored by how quickly folks have started organizing and running tournaments where this was impactful.

We have a fix planned for an upcoming patch so it won't be a problem once that goes out. Thanks!

Really glad you're enjoying it :D it's been super surreal and gratifying to see real players playing it!

To be clear, this was an issue we knew about, but we didn't expect folks to spin up tournaments where it was impactful this quickly. That doesn't change the impact, but we knew this existed, we just didn't have time to fix it before we launched our closed beta.

We will always be working to fix and improve our game, as we won't always get it right the first time. And that's why community feedback is so important to us! Ultimately, we only have so many development hours, and we do our best to prioritize the right things. Sometimes though, we get it wrong! And while we try not to, the good news is that we have a lot of chances to improve over the long haul :)

We know the experience down 4 v 5 isn't great, and we're looking at all of our options to improve it. Hopefully the ult orb + other AFK/leaver compensation helps. Some of those systems are still work in progress, but we know that can feel frustrating. I don't know what solutions will be realistic, and ultimately achieve our goals, but that team is actively trying to figure it out. Sorry I can't give a more concrete answer.

Thanks for playing our game :)

Nothing that I have the information to answer concretely right now, sorry. We will have additional communication coming, but I can't confirm or deny anything. Sorry :(

Disabling observer slots would solve the issue, but would stop anyone from running tournaments or in houses with viewers...and ultimately, that feels worse than giving additional information to players.

Turning off the spectator count which provides a lot of tension and excitement as you see the number tick off when you're sitting in a 1 v 2 trying to clutch is a fairly high cost, and I'm not intimately familiar with the tech, so I don't know how feasible it would be to do quickly.

Hopefully the overall value of having a spectator count, and the way it can make your exciting moments of VALORANT that much more exciting offsets the fairly rare use case of additional information in tournament or custom game play. And when the fix is live, it won't be a problem at all!

Making prioritization calls is REALLY hard, and there's a lot that goes into it. It's part art, part science, part black magic, and I'm not going to pretend that we'll always make the right calls. These are just some of the things we have to consider for any of our development choices, so hopefully, over the long term, we get more of them right than wrong, and make a game that folks really enjoy!