Introduction: Since the inception of the VALORANT competitive scene, many casual and professional players alike have fantasized of the so-called “GF buff”. The underlying theory, broadly stated, posits that players with significant others receive a “buff”, characterized by a distinct mastery of the game and heightened competitive prowess. Rumour has it that many of the top performing pro players enjoy their success in part due to the benefits of this legendary buff. The GF buff has thus become the primary rationale by which VALORANT players on Twitter engage in increasingly desperate acts of courtship. But is the rationale behind these efforts substantiated? As a single and hardstuck gold grad student with too much time on their hands, I set out to find the truth.

Hypothesis: VALORANT pros with girlfriends perform better than their single counterparts

Methods: The NA Champions Tour Stage 3 – Challengers 1 event was the primarily focus of this study due to its relative recency and diverse set of players/teams. Player stats from the round of 32 onwards were obtained from vlr.gg, and R scripts were used to extract each player’s Twitter handle from their player page. Next, all tweets since the start of 2021 were obtained for each player and assessed for known indicators of the GF buff, including phases “my gf” and “national gf day”. This approach successfully assigned the GF buff to players including TenZ, Hiko, and others. It also occasionally gave false positives, including WARDELL, who is well known within the competitive community to be single. These cases were subsequently corrected manually.

Results: Summary of the data is available here and raw numbers are here. >!The resulting statistics were filtered for players who played at least 40 rounds (average game is 13-7, about two full matches). Out of the 95 players analyzed, roughly a quarter (24) had the GF buff. Eight key statistics, including ACS, KD, ADR, KPR, APR, FKPR, and FDPR, and HS%, were compared between players with and without the buff. Interestingly, players with the GF buff displayed higher median values for all categories except ACS and FDPR. **Remarkably, however, there was NO statistically significant difference in any metric between the two groups**.!<

Conclusion: >!Statistical analysis does not support the existence of the “GF buff” at NA Champions Tour Stage 3 – Challengers 1. There is insufficient evidence to claim that VALORANT pros with girlfriends perform better than their single counterparts. The current practice of attributing wins and losses to the GF buff should be re-evaluated within the competitive environment. Whether these findings translate from the professional scene to the casual audience remains to be evaluated.!<