Teabagging has been part of the video game community ever since the crouch button was added. Take down an enemy, and add insult to injury by sitting your buttocks down on their face. But Riot Games is pushing professional VALORANT players to stop the behaviour on broadcast matches.
During last weekend's Challenger 3 series, G2 Esports' Patryk "paTiTek" Fabrowski received a message from a tournament admin during the game. The request: please do not teabag your opponents, or shoot their dead bodies, during the match. As the admin phrased it, this behaviour was 'not desired'.
The message was not received well by the community. Many pointed out that, in a game where your objective is to take the lives of the enemy characters, rubbing some salt in the wound should not be considered as 'undesirable behaviour'. G2's founder Carlos "Ocelote" Rodriguez responded passionately, urging his players to continue with the teabagging and shooting the corpses of in-game characters.
The esports community responded similarly to Blizzard Entertainment's Overwatch League, when they started issuing punishments to players who showed defiant behaviour and still teabagged their opponents. Riot Games is yet to follow up on the discussion and whether or not the no-teabagging rule will be enforced in future events.
