Valorant Champions Players Asked to Use Wired Mouse as Riot Admits FUT Rollback Error

Every player at Valorant Champions Shanghai has been asked to switch to a wired mouse until Riot Games replaces the custom metal desks it built for the event. Riot made the request in a competition update on 1 October, saying repeated mouse interference had caused multiple tech pauses and that the experience at Champions “so far has not met the standards we expect for players or fans.”

An update on VALORANT Champions Shanghai. pic.twitter.com/AWkQAMwUsS

— VALORANT Champions Tour (@ValorantEsports) October 1, 2026

The same statement admits a refereeing mistake in FUT Esports’ series against 100 Thieves on 30 September. Riot now says FUT should have been allowed a round rollback when Yusuf “xeus” Doğan Gözgen’s Spectre stopped firing in round 2 on Split. The 2-0 result still stands, and 100 Thieves keep their place in the playoffs.

Riot’s Wired Mouse Request and the Desk Replacement

The permanent fix Riot describes is to replace “the custom metal desks we fabricated” with desks made from a different material, and it expects that to be in place within the next few days. Until then, a wired connection is the stopgap. Riot noted that many players had already made the switch on their own.

Riot acknowledged what it is asking of players. The statement says peripheral settings are a significant part of how players perform and that muscle memory matters. “This is not an ideal solution, but it is the best option available right now,” Riot said.

This is Riot’s second attempt at the same problem. On 26 September, the Valorant Esports account said Riot’s technical teams had traced the on-stage mouse and input problems to conductivity from the desk material, and that after a fix there had been no further disruption in pre-match tech checks or matches. Leo Faria, Riot’s global head of Valorant esports, added that the fix was temporary and that the desks were being rebuilt entirely. Five days later, the interference was still stopping matches and the replacement desks were still on the way.

Because Riot designed and fabricated those desks for this event, the fault sits in Riot’s own stage hardware. The workaround, though, falls on the players, who are being asked to change equipment well into the second week of the biggest tournament of the year.

What Happened to xeus in Round 2 on Split

FUT won the pistol round on Split, the first map of the series, and went into round 2 on an anti-eco against a weaker 100 Thieves buy. Jordan “vora” Pulwer ended up alone against three FUT players, took down Eray “yetujey” Budak, and was left in a 2v1 against xeus and Volkan “sociablEE” Yönal.

When xeus swung into vora with a full magazine in his Spectre, the weapon did not fire. Vora’s Stinger ran dry moments later, so he switched to his Classic and finished xeus to level the map at 1-1. According to xeus, he could not even pull out his own Classic. Instead of heading into a bonus round with a 2-0 lead, FUT were back to even, and no pause or rollback was called at the time, even though the malfunction was visible on the broadcast.

🚨 WE HAVE AN ISSUE AGAIN 😭 🚨

A technical pause has been called after xeus 🇹🇷 appeared unable to shoot his weapon despite still having bullets in the magazine. 💀

What is happening at Champions Shanghai 😭 pic.twitter.com/qEOk4fRQTL

— ShwN (@20shwn) September 30, 2026

100 Thieves went on to win Split 13-5 and closed out the series 2-0. The match was held up by more than 40 minutes of tech pauses in total.

FUT and Pro Player Reactions

FUT’s frustration boiled over at the post-match press conference. When a question about the incident came up, yetujey leaned into the microphone first: “I don’t want to be disrespectful to you guys, but I don’t care about Riot, so I will not join this.”

In the same press conference, xeus said the problems had been going on since the start of the tournament and described the attempted fixes as “really elementary solutions” that did not work. In a post on X after the match, he listed mouse, sound, and PC freezing problems. His teammate s0pp shared a screenshot showing he had blocked Leo Faria, and sociablEE said the whole map had effectively gone to waste.

Yıl 2026 – Turnuva yapmayı umarım öğreniriz, hele ki bu kadar büyük bir turnuvayı.

– Mouse Issue
– Sound Issue
– Pc Froze

gg xD.

— x1 (@xeus1tap) September 30, 2026

FUT head coach Vlad said the problems went well beyond one round. He described audio issues and roughly six rounds of trouble with the on-stage lighting, and said the only feedback from referees was to “just plug your earphone off and on again.”

The wired mouse request then drew criticism from players across the event. Nongshim RedForce’s Park “Ivy” Sung-hyeon joked on X that this would be his first time playing Valorant on a wired mouse that cannot run a 4000Hz polling rate, the rate at which a mouse reports its position to the PC. Maximilian “Demon1” Mazanov summed it up as “low sens + wired mouse = cooked”. Players on low sensitivity aim with large arm movements, which is where a cable is most likely to get in the way.

Former pro Shahzeeb “ShahZaM” Khan called the situation crazy. Heretics’ Mert “Wo0t” Alkan aimed his post at Riot directly: “Many players work for that stage for a whole year and you don’t have the right to have low standards.” Nongshim RedForce’s Kim “Francis” Mu-bin and Team Liquid’s Nikita “trexx” Cherednichenko also raised concerns about the technical problems at the event.

Why the 100 Thieves Result Stands

After an official post-game evaluation, Riot concluded that “a round rollback should have been allowed” and said it takes responsibility for the error. It still decided against changing the result, because any other option would overturn a win by a team that competed under the same conditions and was not responsible for the mistake.

A rollback restores the game to its state before a round so the round can be replayed, which only works while the match is still in progress. Once the series was over, any remaining correction would have meant replaying at least part of a series that 100 Thieves won on the same desks. That makes leaving the result alone the more defensible of the options Riot had left.

What the statement leaves out is why the referees did not grant the rollback on stage. Vlad told Ult Orb that FUT had “a compliance meeting regarding exactly this kind of situation one week ago,” where officials said a rollback could still be granted even if a player had taken damage in the round. “This is happening in a 2v1 situation. What else do we need for a possible rollback?” he said. Riot’s admission confirms FUT were right about the call, but it does not explain how the referees on stage reached the opposite decision.

The loss sends FUT to the lower bracket against the winner of T1 vs JDG, while 100 Thieves move on to the playoffs. Riot has not put a date on the replacement desks, saying only that it expects a permanent fix within the next few days.