Valorant fans troll Elon Musk, chant ‘Bring back Twitter’ at tournament

The controversial and outspoken entrepreneur Elon Musk has once again gotten a taste of his own medicine.

Fans of Valorant, the competitive first-person shooter, trolled Musk when he attended the Valorant Champions grand finals in Los Angeles on Saturday. People gathered to watch the international esports competition live, but the billionaire accidentally stole the show by becoming the butt of a joke. When a jumbotron showed footage of his face in the crowd, the audience responded by booing him and chanting, “Bring back Twitter.”

The moment immediately blew up on various social media platforms like TikTok. In the clips from the match between North America’s Evil Geniuses and the Singapore-based org Paper Rex, the jumbotron shows live video footage of Musk in the crowd, after which it cuts to a replay from a match. The big screen only showed his face for a few seconds, when the crowd interrupted with booing. Movements after the shouting, members of the crowd chanted “Bring back Twitter” in unison.

Polygon reached out to a representative from Riot Games for comment, and we’ll update if we hear back.

The booing is likely a response to Musk’s purchase of the social media platform formerly known as Twitter. After a period of legal battles and attempting to back out from the deal, Elon Musk officially purchased the social media platform in November 2022. Once purchased, Musk wasted no time making changes to features like the homepage and the Twitter verification system. Then in July of this year, Musk rebranded the platform to “X.”

Musk’s takeover of Twitter has brought a wave of changes to the popular social media platform and, clearly, not everyone is happy. The comment sections of the clip showing the booing are filled with jokes about Elon Musk buying Valorant developer Riot Games. One commenter said, “bro tryna buy valorant,” and another said “bro gonna turn valorant into V.”

Musk has attempted to make a name for himself as video games-loving, internet savvy, billionaire, but if reactions at the Valorant Champions tournament are any indication, he might be remembered in video game fandom as the guy who ruined Twitter.