Fnatic’s Valorant coach, Jacob “mini” Harris, sparked a debate on VCT desk casters and analysts being allowed to listen in on team’s comms during games, with various players, coaches and on air talent chiming in.
Team communication is a closely guarded secret in esports. The main reason being that letting it get into the public allows other teams to gain knowledge of your strategies and protocols. It’s so important in fact, that it caused a spat between the coaches of NRG and EG leaking scrim VODs.
As a result, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that coaches are naturally apprehensive about non-team members listening in on their comms. Which is what VCT’s production allows desk analysts and casters to do.
This sparked a debate from Fnatic’s Valorant coach, mini, calling it “very weird” that analysts were allowed to do so.
Fnatic Valorant coach questions if casters should be allowed to listen to team comms
The debate was initially sparked in response to a Americas broadcast segment, where they talked about what team’s comms sound like. In fact, many of America’s talent has been candid about being able to hear team’s comms on podcasts like Plat Chat.
Alex “Goldenboy” Mendez, a host for VCT Americas, said in response, “we have no intention of saying anything that would have a negative impact on the players.” Adding that it is all to make the broadcast segments as interesting as possible.
However, it’s quite clear mini had his apprehensions, saying, “I have no doubts about the intentions and trust the execution. It just doesn’t feel right, it can go wrong in many ways.”
Sentinels’ assistant coach, Drew “Drew Spark” Spark-Whitworth also chimed in saying, “while I think it’s important for talent to be informed on team structures to help their work, I’m not a fan of anything that will influence how players communicate in the server.”
Keeping the teamspeak as a safe space for open communication is important to team vibes and confidence – they don’t need to be hearing their comms dissected on a podcast a couple of days later.”
Others were more concerned of the “cringe” angle of the debate, with Cloud 9’s Jake “jakee” Anderson jokingly saying, “I be saying the most random s***.” With Mini responding, “I didn’t even think about the ‘I better not have said some cringe/terrible s***” angle.”
However not every single desk talent is interested in team’s comms. EMEA analyst Jakub “Lothat” Szygulski wrote, “ I’m not sure about other people but me, Yinsu, and kaquka said to our EMEA production that we don’t want to hear the comms and we shouldn’t have them because of competitive integrity.”
However this is not the first time in esports where talent being able to listen in on voice comms has led to leaks. In 2020, BLAST fell into controversy in CSGO after a team’s strats were leaked due to mishandling of VODs.
About Post Author
