VALORANT Lockdown Rules

Rule Inheritance

1. These rules are based off of and should inherit from the Valorant Champions Tour Stage 1 2022 Official Rules which can be found here. The rules outlined in this document are only additions, enhancements, or modifications to rules outlined in the Official Rules.
2. This is the official ruleset for the Nerd Street Champs tournaments. In instances where a situation is not directly outlined in this document the decision will be made by the Tournament Operator (TO) of the event.

General Rules

Custom Lobbies

1. Top Seed will create the custom lobby and will invite the opposite team captain via Riot ID using the Battlefy match dashboard to communicate with the team you are playing. Team Captains will then invite their respective players to the lobby after making map picks and bans on Battlefy.
2. Top Seed will be responsible for choosing the most fair server for both teams, prioritizing the lowest ping differential. If players cannot decide this, a tournament admin will make the decision for the server. If ping differential is close a tournament admin will make the decision to play a particular server or decide to play 1 map on each central server (Illinois or Texas, alternating based off of which team picks the map) and then coin flipping in your Battlefy chat box for server on the 3rd map if needed.
   1. Lobby Settings:
      1. CHEATS: OFF
      2. TOURNAMENT MODE: ON
      3. OVERTIME: WIN BY TWO: ON
      4. PLAY OUT ALL ROUNDS: OFF

Exploits

1. VALORANT has bugs, exploits and glitches, most of which are being fixed routinely. Most of these exploits pertain to certain agents and abilities and while all agents will be available, KNOWN exploits and glitches will be listed and banned in Discord so as to inform you of what is and isn’t allowed. As a rule of thumb, any ability that is invisible, invulnerable, silent (when it should make an audio queue) or glitched out/into the map are considered exploits even if they are not currently on the list.
2. If there is evidence of a player abusing an exploit there will be a warning and possible disqualification depending on the severity. If that same team abuses another exploit after receiving a warning, they will be immediately disqualified.

Timeouts and Disconnects

1. Tactical Timeouts: Each team gets one, 1-minute tactical timeout PER HALF using the tactical timeout feature in the game. 2 tactical timeouts max in total per map, per team.
2. Technical Timeouts will only be used for Disconnects and/or serious technical issues with a player. If a technical timeout is used, one representative from each team must immediately join the “Tournament Support” Discord voice channel and let the admins know of the issue. During a technical timeout, coaches are not allowed to talk to their players and use the timeout as a tactical one.
3. Technical Timeout 1: up to 10 Minutes
4. Technical Timeout 2: up to 5 Minutes
5. If a team has used their available timeouts they will not be allowed another and may have to play out the rest of the match 4v5 depending on the ruling of the admin and the issue that is persisting.

ROSTER

Substitutes and Roster Changes

1. Each team is allowed a maximum of two substitutes for online events. You may only swap players between maps, not during a match unless otherwise agreed upon by the tournament admin.
2. You may not make any roster changes the day of the event. All roster changes must be submitted by midnight (EST) the day before the event.
3. Only 2 players may be swapped out of the original playing roster, three original members must remain for the subsequent VALORANT Nerd Street Championship if you qualify. You may not “give” your team slot away if you cannot maintain 3 of your 5 original members of the team you signed up with.
4. Players cannot be on 2 rosters at once for any tournament. Emergency substitutions are allowed upon permission from the TO as long as those players are not already on a roster for the same Nerd Street tournament.

Coaches

1. Coaches are allowed to be in their coach slot in their team’s matches as long as they are on the team’s Battlefy roster before the start of the tournament.
2. Coaches are only allowed to communicate with their team before the first round starts, halftime, the first buy phase of OT and during tactical timeouts during a map.
3. Any infringement on these rules will be met with an immediate disqualification to the team and potential ban from future tournaments.

STREAMING & BROADCAST

Below are the rules for streaming and broadcast. All streaming and co-streaming requires approval from Nerd Street Gamers.

Broadcast

1. During a timeout on live broadcast the production team must switch scenes. This is to keep competitive integrity for the sake of stream sniping and teams seeking information by using our broadcast to their advantage during a timeout.
2. Valorant tournament organizers must toggle off the "show blood" and “show bodies” setting, per Riot guidelines. This includes small, community tournaments of less than $10k prize pool.

Streaming

1. Content Creators are free to live stream the event. They will be required to have their streams muted during discord conversations with admins including the captains meeting before the tournament begins.
2. We recommend that live streams have at least a 2-minute delay on them. This will not be enforced but we will not be regulating “Stream Sniping” as you have free will to implement a delay.
3. CO-Streaming requires approval from Nerd Street Gamers including, but not limited to:
   1. Graphics pack
   2. Title approval
   3. Hashtags and commands

SEEDING

1. Seeding for the Nerd Street VALORANT tournaments will be done by the below system:
   1. Recent tournament placings as well as VLR rankings will serve as seeding for the initial groups.
   2. Two teams make it out of each group. The initial playoff bracket seeding will be based off of team’s placement from groups.
   3. After the first round of playoffs, seeding from that round forward will be determined by seed-stealing. This means that if you beat a team seeded better than you initially on the bracket, you inherit their seed for your following games.

MAP BANS / VETOES / SIDE SELECTION

1. The below system will be used for Map Bans / Vetoes and Side Selection. Teams have 1 minute in between each map pick/ban to make the next choice. If 2 minutes pass and the team who is vetoing hasn’t chosen yet, their opponent can steal their veto.
   1. Map Pool: Bind, Haven, Pearl, Ascent, Icebox, Breeze, Fracture

Best of One (Top seed gets to choose to be Team A or Team B)

1. Team A - Ban 1 (Example: Ban Pearl)
2. Team B - Ban 2 (Example: Ban Haven)
3. Team A - Ban 3 (Example: Ban Bind)
4. Team B- Ban 4 (Example: Ban Ascent)
5. Team A - Ban 5 (Example: ban Breeze)
6. Team B - Pick map out of remaining 2 maps
7. Team A - Selects Side

Best of Three (Top seed gets to choose to be Team A or Team B)

1. Team A - Ban 1 map
2. Team B - Ban 1 map
3. Team A - Picks Map 1
4. Team B - Map 1 side selection
5. Team B - Picks Map 2
6. Team A - Map 2 side selection
7. Team A - Ban 1 map
8. Team B - Ban 1 map
9. Team A - Map 3 side selection

Battlefy and Discord

Battlefy

1. Teams must register on Battlefy with a 5 player roster. Teams may have up to two substitute players on the Battlefy roster for an online tournament that they also registered with TOs before the tournament.
2. Team captains will receive an email with a step by step instructional guide outlining how to register on battlefy using the code sent in the email.
3. Battlefy will be used for bracketing, match assignment, team communication, vetoes, coin flips and disputes. The dispute feature will be used to ping admins.

Discord

1. Each team captain will be required to join the Nerd Street Discord and will participate in a captains meeting for a quick breakdown of the event regarding schedule and broadcast on the tournament day.
2. Text channels will be set up for secondary communications. The main form of communication with admins should be in the Tournament Support voice channel for the quickest response. You will also be able to use the “Report Match Issue” button on Battlefy to ping admins with a problem, but Discord should be the primary form of communication with admins.