Valkyrae calls out Twitch Rivals for Marvel Rivals tournament rule changes

Marvel Rivals is a new addition to eSports, but things are heating up in the game’s competitive sphere. Twitch Rivals already hosts the most popular streamers in one Marvel Rivals Showdown Tournament with a prize pool of USD 200,000. However, the tournament has taken a turn: streamers including Valkyrae, Necros and Bogur are voicing outrage over Twitch’s confusing rule changes and setup choices. Let’s explore everything we know why Marvel Rivals Showdown is causing streamers stress.

Twitch Rivals is a tournament initiative organized by the streaming platform Twitch. The event aims to bring together the site’s most popular streamers in competition. It works several times a year and takes place in different game titles. For streamers, participating in a Twitch Rivals match is a huge honor, and the tournaments often have big prizes.

Twitch Rivals tournaments are held on the initiative’s official Twitch.com account, twitch.tv/twitchrivals. Participating creators also often live stream their gameplay on their individual channels.

In January 2025, Twitch partnered with the smash hit hero shooter Marvel Rivals in a fresh Twitch Rivals event: the Marvel Rivals Showdown. The tournament takes place on 18 January and 19 January 2025. It features the game’s most famous content creators and spans all ranks.

Twitch Rivals tournaments offer competitive prizes, but they typically balance their intensity with light-hearted team chemistry and memorable stream moments. Ideally, streamers of all backgrounds play and reach out, collaborate and entertain their audience.

Originally, Twitch Rivals specified that Marvel Rivals Showdown teams could contain a maximum of two Grandmaster-level players. However, the organization changed the rules at the last minute, allowing teams to have up to four Grandmaster players on one roster. Most teams quickly took advantage of the changes and restructured their players to prioritize higher ranks and have a better chance of winning the $21,000 Grand Prize.

Stacked Teams: “Coughing Baby vs Hydrogen Bomb”

As the rosters were finalized and the players began participating in scrims, it became very apparent that there were large differences in rank between the competing teams. Valkyrieswho has 1.3 million Twitch followers, was one such streamer who became frustrated with uneven team matches when she and her mostly-playing-the-game teammates randomly faced a roster of four Grandmaster-level players, including several former Overwatch – pros.

While live streaming, Valkyrae became discouraged and chatted with her teammates about whether to surrender. One team member noted that the enemy team had ‘one pro player on each role’, while their team only had two pros per the original Marvel Rivals Showdown rules. Valkyrae answered angrily and said:

I throw up. Which Twitch staff member should I speak to? I don’t understand how this happened. I waited five years to play in a Twitch Rivals just for this to happen? This is insane! Who planned this waste? Whose rat an idea was this? I don’t get it! (…) Just say it’s a pro tournament at that point, like why even have people under Grandmaster? Who does this? Twitch has so many problems.

– Valkyries

It’s worth noting that Valkyrae has only recently returned to Twitch after five years in an exclusivity contract with YouTube. This is her first Twitch Rivals while back on the platform.

Valkyrae’s teammates Escaywho has over 241,000 followers on Twitch, shared her sentiments. When the group met after the match, they complained about how strong the enemy team was.

Contributor and enemy team member @b0gur described the situation on X.com as “Right now its coughing baby vs hydrogen bomb.” He also noted the uneven matchups, saying “now (the tournament is) just a bunch of eternal sweat (like us) with over 300 hours stomping on streamers who are just there for fun.”

Split-Second Decisions: Sykkuno almost kicked

Bulgarian streamer Book clock rose to fame for his Overwatch skills before moving to Marvel Rivals, which he currently streams. He has over 100,000 followers on his Twitch channel, twitch.tv/bogur. Necroswho also rose to fame in Overwatch as one of the game’s strongest Genji players, has over 735,000 Twitch followers at twitch.tv/necros. The two joined the 3.9 million-following streamer Sykkuno, 60,000 followers Marvel Rivals pro kayjii, Creator of 200,000 followers ellum and 913,000 followers Overwatch legend ml7 to create a powerhouse Marvel Rivals Showdown team.

While Bogur and his team emerged victorious from their matchup against Valkyrae’s group, it turned out that the team would face their own battles with Twitch’s event management soon after.

Twitch originally invited Sykkuno to Necro and Bogur’s team because they required a Platinum player to lower their team’s rank average and comply with the rules. The two welcomed Sykkuno to Team Necros and began practicing. As Bogur and Necros boasted some of the highest Marvel Rivals ranks on their teams and both had experience in similar Overwatch tournaments, they invested time training the lower-ranked Sykkuno to prepare. The group even played in scrims together prior to the start of the tournament.

However, the team was shocked, then Twitch removed Sykkuno from their team just one day before Marvel Rivals Showdown began because he had hit Diamond in the previous season. It seems that Twitch’s reaction time with this decision was a little too slow and caused some confusion. Bogur, ellum and Sykkuno all commented on the dilemmaand the team panicked as the start of the tournament approached.

Sykkuno posted a meme on his official X.com account depicting Twitch Rivals shooting him before saying “the tournament is balanced now.” Bogur explained the situation to his chat on stream, saying:

“that’s so stupid…it’s funny because they invited Sykkuno, so I would expect them to check before inviting him, but they only checked a day before the tournament. So that’s awesome.”

– Book clock

As Bogur continued, he expressed frustration because the entire team’s synergy was broken after removing one member, and they had to start from scratch with new strategies and protocols to accommodate a new player.

Finally, Sykkuno’s teammate and friend ellumwho has over 200,000 Twitch followers and also participated in the tournament, issued an ultimatum live on the stream: if Sykkuno wasn’t allowed to play, he would drop out too. Ellum stated, “I can’t do that to my friend (…) basically, if he doesn’t play in it, I don’t want to play in it.”

Ellum noted that “the tournament is hard to do and I think they’re doing their best” and his decision is just “up to me, to help my friend.” He continued and said “Things are being worked out behind the scenes (…) it should all be fine.”

Twitch eventually relented and allowed Sykkuno to re-enter the tournament around 6:45 PM EST on January 17th. However, the situation had already gained a lot of traction and disappointed the community. An archive account on X.com, @sykkarchive, even referred to the situation as “World War III.” One thing is for sure: Marvel Rivals Showdown organizers are facing massive community pressure to ensure the event goes ahead without further hiccups and is closely watched by fans.