In an unfortunate turn of events, a professional Valorant team had to abandon their game because their players were distracted by Honkai: Star Rail. The latest game from the HoYoverse has only been out for a week, but fans have already put in a lot of time to complete the story. The aforementioned Valorant pro seemed to have the same thought on game day.
Before the official release of “Honkai : Star Trail” on April 26, the game had already received more than 10 million pre-registrations and surpassed Genshin Impact’s open day downloads, thus gaining huge popularity. Like other HoYoverse games, Star Rail is an action-adventure game with a gacha system in which players pull off a variety of playable characters. What sets this game apart from other HoYoverse titles is that it has a turn-based combat system that many fans have enjoyed playing so far.
Due to the immersive open world and interesting storyline of Honkai : Star Trails, many players make sure to find time to advance the story, do side quests, and complete daily and weekly quests. But there’s a downside to this, as players can get so caught up in grinding, especially if they’re trying to get enough Star Rail Passes to draw cards, that they forget about their real-life responsibilities. This is exactly what happened to Valorant players from Taiwanese organization Ghost CommandoS, who reportedly lost track of time playing Star Rail, so they couldn’t install the Valorant Champions Tour (VCT) client in time for their matches against S2 Esports Contest. Ghost CommandoS was then forced to forfeit the match, giving S2 Esports the victory point.
On Twitter, many users found the situation hilarious, while also saying they couldn’t blame players for being sucked into the Honkai: orbit. Someone joked that players might be busy “simulating” the game characters while tweeting GIFs of Himeko and Kafka. At the same time, some people have questioned why players need to reinstall the VCT client on PC during the regular season. A Valorant pro replied that Riot Games uses three different clients, which might explain why Ghost CommandoS players had to reinstall it.
The good news is that Ghost CommandoS was able to play an extra game after the forfeit event. The bad news is that the team has lost the Challenger League in Taiwan and Hong Kong and is in eighth place, while S2 Esports is already in the top five. So, the moral here is to not get distracted by a game like Honkai: Star Rail on big race days.
Valorant is available on PC. Honkai: Star Rail is now available on iOS, Android and PC. A PlayStation version is in development.