2.5 Years.
Two Questions.
Real Answers.
This is the full story how the project started, how the data was collected, what it found - and what still has no explanation. The video goes deeper on all of it. This is the reference.
A Gun Charm Which
Can't Be Bought.
Only Way - Get Picked.
Every other item in Valorant has a price. Battle pass tier. Store access. Accessory store. But the Riot Gun Buddy - officially called the Fist Bump Buddy - has none of those. It has never appeared in the store. It is not tied to any event, rank, or achievement. There is no grind that leads to it.
The only path to one runs through a Riot Games developer. They decide if you get it. They decide when. Nobody else has a say.
"[...] demonstrate good sportsmanship while in a match with a Riot employee. [...]"
‐ Riot Games official support page. Their public statement on it.
One sentence. That is everything Riot has ever said publicly. So the community built theories to fill the gap. "Play Jett. Own expensive skins. Hit high rank. Be a streamer. Be in the right gamemode at the right time." Everyone had a theory. Nobody had data.
Until someone spent 2.5 years collecting it :))
I Spotted a Gap.
Had the Access.
So I Started Collecting.
In 2023, Keeoh posted a video saying there was nothing left to cover in Valorant. That stuck. Because the Riot Gun Buddy existed - the one item with no store page, no unlock condition, no explanation from Riot beyond a single paragraph - and nobody had actually gone and collected real data on it. Just the same recycled threads looping forever.
The first few owners came up naturally, in regular games. Asked them after the match. Got completely different answers every time. That was enough to know something was there. But doing it that way was too slow - you can't see the buddy from the lobby screen, so most owners were gone before there was even a chance to ask. A friend built something that fixed that. It reads lobby data through the API before the game loads - skins, buddies, full loadout - before round one even starts. Nothing going through internal files. Completely clean and allowed. I won't name it, but there is a reason for it. It's explained why in the video.
That changed everything. Nine owners found in a single day at the high point. Every conversation logged: date, agent, skins worn, how they got it, how long ago. 450 players approached. Over 360 verified stories. Approximately over 900 days of playing Valorant.
The original goal was simple - figure out how to get one. That stopped mattering pretty quickly. Four separate times a developer offered it directly. Said no every time. The project had become the actual point of finding out the truth. If the buddy ever comes, it should be because of this whole work - not because someone handed it over mid-collection.
Always In-Game.
Always the Same
Two Questions.
approached
entries logged
active collection
Every single time.
Every single story in this database came from a live Valorant match. A small number - under 1% - came through people met in-game who passed the project along to someone they knew. Everything else was direct, in a real lobby, between real rounds, with someone who had no time to prepare an answer or craft a story.
Finding owners at scale needed a tool. A friend built something that reads lobby data through the API before the game loads - full loadout, skins, buddies, everything - before round one starts. It can't be named here, but if you want to know exactly how it works, that page explains it. What it changed was the approach. Walking into a game already knowing someone had one meant the message could go out in the first seconds. But the bigger thing was the reaction. Leading with the fact that you already knew they had it - before they said a word - stopped people in their tracks. Nobody expects that. It reframes the whole conversation instantly, because now they're not talking to someone who wants one. They're talking to someone who already found them.
The cover helped too. When players without a buddy noticed the name "RGB Data Collector" and asked what it meant - before any trolling, just genuine curiosity - the answer was always the same: "I work in an LED company where I'm checking lumen compliance on strip lights. Simple regulations". It held. The project stayed clean for long enough to actually start conversations.
And the simple two questions every time: "How did you get it and how long ago?". That's the whole thing. Operated across EU and NA - not just one server. Everyone was told upfront that I'm doing project about them and that their story would stay anonymous. Only the story how and when mattered. There was a loose script early on for when people started asking follow-up questions - all of which are answered in the FAQ - but after a few hundred conversations it wasn't needed anymore. Fully memorised. The gap between 450 approached and 360 logged is just reality: some ignored it, laughed at it, some left before seeing it, some didn't have enough information for me to write this down. The 360 are the ones who answered with something real.
The full methodology ‐ how conversations were verified, what a typical exchange looked like, and why false submissions sit under 1% ‐ is in the video.
Some Myths Dead.
One Pattern Real.
One Still Unexplained.
The community assumed getting a Riot Gun Buddy was mostly luck - being in the right lobby at the right time. The data says it is more complicated than that.
Personal connections to Riot employees account, streaming, IRL events, and content creation - those were the primary methods. The split of how many surprised even me - and changes how you should think about who actually has one.
Full breakdown by method ‐ with percentages ‐ is in the video, including results that didn't fit any expected category.
I'll play Jett or Sage - they get chosen more often.
Even though they are the most picked agent - that doesn't reflect that they will help you get one.
Imma buy expensive skins so they will notice me.
Rioters don't look at skin purchases. They look at your behavior and engagement.
I'll grind to Radiant since that's where devs play the most.
There is no correlation. Developers play across all of the gamemodes and across all of the ranks.
Every person who got one in a regular game ‐ when asked what the match was like ‐ described the same thing:
It was positive. Making the lobby feel worth playing in. Not performing it. Just actually being nice to everyone like they are every day.
The database is built from EU and NA sessions. Both regions show the same pattern. The behaviour that gets noticed by a developer - being positive, communicating, making the lobby worth playing in - is not a regional thing. That part translates everywhere.
The behavior data visualised ‐ how consistently this pattern appears across 360 entries, and what it means ‐ is in the video.
How is it that sometimes you don't see people with RGB through your whole play-time?
In my example in one day in one session turned up nine RGB owners across fifteen games. Other days I went weeks without seeing a single one. The gap between those two realities has no explanation in the data why you might meet people without one or with one - not time of day, not region, not gamemode. Some days maybe every third lobby has an owner. Most days none do.
That question on how often you can meet them is still open - it might be nothing or lead to discovery of Valorant "Trust Factor". It would be the most interesting finding in the whole dataset. Either way, there is no answer yet ‐ only the theory.
Woke Up One Day
I Got Banned
It was over...
June 22nd. My bday (what a timing). A clip from the skin-trolling hit 118k views overnight. Went to sleep happy with a huge bang. Woke up next day - the account is banned.
First reaction was panic. Thought Riot had mistaken my project for cheating - which I wasn't doing. I thought two years of work had just been wasted since this is what ppl see. That was the worst that could happen to me so deep into the project. For a while it felt like the only explanation.
But it wasn't. The Vanguard Police Department - a Riot-internal group focused on banning cheat-adjacent content - had swept the account up as a false positive. Section 7.1.10. Programs that access internal game data. which mine isn't Not the project. Not the research. Just the software being shown publicly in the clips. If I would've avoided that - that wouldn't have happened
The appeal I've sent to TikTok and Tencent/Riot - did nothing. My favorite handle was gone. And since that point - the project went private - no content, no posting, just collecting quietly and trying to figure out if continuing made any sense. That grey zone still exists for usage of my app, however Riot approved the video. The tool name still doesn't get mentioned - that's the main deal.
"Nah, I don't want one. This could mean that this whole project I'm doing it for the buddy, not the truth"
Four separate times across the project, a Riot employee offered me RGB directly. All four times the answer was no. Not because the item doesn't matter - it does - but because accepting it mid-project would have changed what the whole thing meant. The research was supposed to be about understanding how others got it. Getting one as a side effect of asking the question would have made everything feel hollow. If it ever comes, it should be because 2.5 years of work and 450 conversations earned it. Not because someone felt generous in a lobby while the spreadsheet was open.
Btw my tag is "RGBDataCollector #Knows" if anyone is reading this, but more about it later :))
Riot Support was contacted before publishing information about the project. The response confirmed: talking about the project and its findings is fine. One condition was attached ‐ the app used to find owners stays unnamed. It does, and it will. And I won't be pointing to what the app is called.
The full story of the ban, going underground, and the path back ‐ including details that don't compress into a paragraph ‐ is in the video.
The Database
Stays Open
Till The End Of Time.
The video is a checkpoint, not the finish line. Anyone who receives a Riot Gun Buddy after it drops can still submit their story to make the database even bigger. Every one of you moves the database closer to 1000 ‐ and a Part 2 video when it gets there. Future collabs on that are open to any creator who wants to cover it at that point.
One Person
Simple Spreadsheet.
2.5 Years Later...
Hi, it's me. I'm the creator of this website and the whole project.
I started the RGB Project in 2022.
Previously Community and Social Media Manager at SteelSeries - 3D Aim Trainer. I'm never focused on rank - games are meant to be fun. Even when working at an aim training company, rank was never the point.
The RGB Project is the most complete thing built since: 2.5 years, over 450 in-game conversations - didn't know it will be out here on such a big scale.
For two and a half years this stayed completely private. No posts, no updates, no audience watching. After the TikTok ban that fear got real - that the whole thing had ended before anyone ever saw it. That the journey was over before the destination. Pitching the video changed that. Green light from MrLowlander. Green light from Riot. The first time in years it felt like this was actually going to exist.
None Of This
Without These People
Would Exist.
The Original Application - the people who built the foundation this whole project runs on.
Can't say the name of that community but every member who showed up consistently and helped keep the application running.
For building the original app that started everything.
For helping create me the first application that made finding RGBs possible without looking through profiles.
For years of patience and teaching everything about the API.
Behind The Scenes - the people who kept the private side of the project alive.
The biggest one - for working behind the scenes on the privately built application that helps me till this day and carrying the Loadout Project alongside me.
For the core app modification that made it all run even better without RGB Hunter app.
For the quiet background work on the writing side of things.
The Video - the people who made the public side of this project happen.
For making the findings video. Genuinely glad it came out the way it did.
For meeting in game and helping me establish contact with Mr. Lowlander.
My Friend Circle - the people who kept me going in my worst.
Without that group of my true friends, I wouldn't be standing here ♥
Those are the true heroes of this project. I don't know if I would be standing here without their help. Every single one of them contributed in a way that made this possible. Some are the public face of the project, some are the quiet background heroes - but all of them are the reason this exists in the first place. If you helped in any way, even just moral support, you are appreciated more than you know.