Riot rebuilds the Valorant Champions Shanghai desks after mouse trouble

The player desks at Valorant Champions Shanghai have been replaced in the middle of the tournament. New desks were installed on the morning of Friday, October 2, 2026, after Riot Games traced repeated wireless mouse problems to metal components in the original ones, Sheep Esports reported that day. The update came from Leo Faria, Global Head of Valorant Esports at Riot Games, in a post on social media.

With the new desks in place, players may try their wireless mice again. The fallback is set in advance: if the stuttering returns, the event goes straight back to wired peripherals. Faria acknowledged the disruption and thanked the players for their patience, and said that Riot's event, production, technical, operations, creative and broadcast teams were all working on a resolution.

Sheep Esports, October 2, 2026; Riot Games' event guide, September 11, 2026.

What Riot found in the desks

Champions is the world championship of Valorant, the last event of the season of the Valorant Champions Tour, the circuit Riot Games runs for its tactical shooter. The Shanghai edition started on September 24. According to Sheep Esports, players had reported problems with their mice earlier in the event, Francis and trexx among them.

The complaints were about stuttering and interference on wireless mice. Faria had already said that Riot's investigation pointed to specific metal components in the construction of the desks as the cause. Riot first applied a temporary fix and began rebuilding the desks entirely.

The temporary fix did not settle the matter for good. Sheep Esports reports that an earlier update had described a full day without disruption, before the technical concerns came back. The new desks installed on October 2 are the full rebuild that Riot had announced.

Wired mice as a stopgap

While the desks were being rebuilt, Riot asked players to switch to wired mice to limit the interference. Sheep Esports reported on October 1 that Riot's advice to play with a cable stood because the problem was not solved and the metal desks still had to be replaced.

Players said publicly what the switch meant for them. Ivy of Nongshim RedForce wrote on social media that it was a first to play Valorant on a wired mouse, and on one that could not run at 4000Hz, Sheep Esports reported. The figure refers to the polling rate, how many times per second the mouse reports its position to the computer. Demon1 said that players who use a low sensitivity, and so move their mouse across long distances, would struggle with a cable, the outlet added.

Sheep Esports also set the problem beside another tournament played at the same time. At the Asian Games, the League of Legends competition banned wireless mice because of communication issues, the outlet reported, and players there said they had struggled with the change.

The round on Split

Sheep Esports singles out one incident, in FUT Esports' Group A series against 100 Thieves, which 100 Thieves won 2-0. In its report of October 2, the outlet says a malfunction hit a crucial round of that series.

The two teams came to Shanghai by different routes. According to Dot Esports, 100 Thieves won the Americas league's Stage 2, the last league phase of the season, and had recently won the Valorant tournament of the Esports World Cup 2026. FUT Esports qualified from EMEA, the league for Europe, the Middle East and Africa, through Championship Points, the season-long count of results kept by Riot. Group A also holds JD Gaming, runners-up of the Stage 2 playoffs in China, and T1, who qualified on points from the Pacific league.

Both arrived after long seasons. FUT Esports played Masters London in June, Riot's field list for that event shows, and in August they were one of the teams that came through the EMEA Stage 2 Play-Ins and reached the league's finals weekend at the Olimpic Arena in Badalona, near Barcelona, by which time Sheep Esports already counted them among the teams sure of a place in Shanghai. 100 Thieves won their Stage 2 title at the Americas Finals of September 4 to 6 in Sao Paulo, the first time those finals were played outside Los Angeles, according to Riot's league guide. A single loss in the group stage does not end a run in this format, but it leaves the losing team one more defeat from elimination.

Sheep Esports describes the decisive moment of the series. In the second round on Split, after FUT Esports had won the pistol round, the opening round of the half, 100 Thieves answered with a force buy, spending what money they had, and planted the spike, the bomb of Valorant. As FUT Esports prepared to retake the site, xeus lost a duel when his Spectre, a submachine gun, failed to fire.

100 Thieves won that round, and FUT Esports had to play an eco round next, a round in which a team saves money and buys little equipment. The series also went through several technical pauses. With the defeat, FUT Esports missed the chance to secure an early place in the playoffs.

In a statement reported by Sheep Esports on October 1, Riot Games said the event had fallen below the standards it expects, citing the repeated mouse issues and the changes to the tournament desks. Riot apologized for the bug that hit xeus and admitted that the affected round should have been replayed. It also said the result of the match would stand.

How the players responded

The reactions were public. After the series, yetujey of FUT Esports expressed frustration at the press conference and declined to talk about the incident, and xeus later criticized the organization of the tournament on social media, Sheep Esports reported. KROSTALY described a wider set of problems beyond the mice: audio, frozen computers and screen brightness.

How Champions Shanghai is played

The tournament runs from September 24 to October 18 at two venues, the Jing'an Sports Center and the Mercedes-Benz Arena, with a prize pool of US$2,250,000, according to Dot Esports. Its sixteen teams come from the four leagues of the circuit, Americas, EMEA, Pacific and China, and each group holds one team from each league.

Riot's guide to the event, published on September 11, gives the format. In the group stage, sixteen teams enter and eight advance; a team is out after two losses, and every match is a best-of-three, a series won by the first team to take two maps. The playoffs are a double-elimination bracket: a team must lose twice to be knocked out.

The new desks therefore arrived on the eighth of ten group stage days, with matches still to play on October 3 and 4 before the field is cut to eight.

The first Champions in China

The setting adds weight to the event. Champions Shanghai is the first world championship of Valorant held in China, Sheep Esports noted when it listed the qualified teams on September 5. The city has hosted a Valorant international before: Masters Shanghai in 2024, won by Gen.G Esports. Four of the sixteen teams come from the Chinese league: TYLOO, JD Gaming, EDward Gaming and XLG Esports.

It is also, according to Sheep Esports, the last Champions under the current format of the circuit. In April, Riot Games announced a new structure for 2027, with a two-year partnership cycle, Cups in place of league play and Open Qualifiers available to all teams. The three previous world titles went to Evil Geniuses in 2023, EDward Gaming in 2024 and NRG in 2025, and two of those champions, EDward Gaming and NRG, are in the field again.

The stakes are set by the prize pool. Of the US$2,250,000 on offer, US$1,000,000 goes to the champion, Dot Esports reported. Both Dot Esports and Sheep Esports list the grand final as a best-of-five, a series won by the first team to take three maps.

What comes next

The first test of the new desks is the last two days of the group stage. Players who return to their wireless mice will show whether the rebuild has removed the interference; if it has not, Riot has already said it will go back to wired peripherals at once.

After the group stage, the schedule gives the event two dark days on October 5 and 6 before the playoffs start on October 7, and four more between October 12 and 15 before the finals weekend. The grand final is set for Sunday, October 18.

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