Esports at the 2023 Southeast Asian Games – Valorant tournament

The Valorant tournament for the 2023 Southeast Asian Games was held on May 8 to 10 at the Olympia Mall in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. This is the inaugural appearance of the title in the games, in which there were joint gold medal winners, as well as joint bronze medal winners.

Indonesia and Singapore took home joint gold medals following the controversial gold medal match which was marred by an alleged in-game bug abuse. There were no silver medals awarded, however, as the Philippines and Vietnam took home bronze medals despite the former winning the bronze medal match.

The tournament consisted of single round-robin group stage and a single-elimination playoff stage.

Participating teams
There are six nations that participated in the Valorant tournament.

Group Stage
All matches were a best-of-1 series, and the top four teams after the group stages qualified for the semifinals.

Semifinals
Winners advanced to the gold medal match, while losers were relegated to the bronze medal match.

Gold medal match
The gold medal match was marred by controversy after a protest from Indonesia was raised, saying that the Cypher camera placement by one of the players of Team Singapore, Ingram Tan, was used to gain an unfair advantage. However, this was refuted by Singapore's Tidus Goh, stating that the rulebooks stated that 'as long as the camera is viewable and able to be destroyed by both teams, it is legal, furthermore according to the rulebook, the penalty depends if the bug had an impact on the round'. He also revealed fully through TwitLonger on what happened onsite during the controversy. The camera placement has stirred a debate within the Valorant Southeast Asian community, with mixed opinions on it. With this, the tournament officials were forced to suspend play at the start of the 15th round of the second game with Singapore already leading the series after winning Game 1 earlier, leading to review the potential bug abuse.

After an initial lengthy review, the tournament officials decided to roll back and replay the game to round 14, with Singapore leading 9–4. However, Indonesia disputed this, claiming that the bug occurred on that round. A new set of ruling was then sent out at 4am that the match be replayed at round 11, with the score being tied at 5–5. Just when the play is about to resume at 8am the next day, Team Indonesia told the organizers that they would forfeit the series, saying that 'it was unfair that the rules had not made clear'. With the result, the second game was abandoned with the scoreline of 10–4 as is, and giving the 2–0 win to Singapore. The spokesperson of the Singapore Esports Association, Janet Su, stated in an interview that the SEA Games Organizing Committee offered both teams to become joint-gold medalists of the tournament, in which Singapore accepted in the spirit of sportsmanship.

Viewership
The tournament had the highest peak viewership of 44,324 live viewers in the tournament particularly during the controversial gold medal match between Singapore and Indonesia, and the tournament also averaged 11,829 viewers throughout the tournament.