3 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. Once the video is out it goes deeper on all of it. This page is the reference.
A 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.
One sentence 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 3 years collecting it :))
"[...] demonstrate good sportsmanship while in a match with a Riot employee. [...]"
From Riot Games' official support page, their public statement on 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 method I don't get into on this site. Riot reviewed the project before I published anything, and the one condition was that the method never gets named, not here, not in the video, not anywhere. Naming it would just hand out a way for other players to try the same thing without authorization, and that risks real bans. The How Do I Know page covers this in more detail.
Players
approached
Verified stories
logged
Years, mostly
evenings
Owners found in
a single day
What it changed was 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. 550+ players approached. 440+ verified stories logged. 3 years, mostly evenings, in live lobbies. Watch the numbers update live →
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 body of work, not because someone handed it over mid-collection.
Always in-game.
Always the same two questions.
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 something that changed the odds. What that was stays unnamed, that page is covered separately, but 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. The bigger thing was the reaction. Leading with the fact that you already knew, 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.
Not a real logged entry. This is a probability-based generator, built from patterns across the real dataset, not one specific person. Hit shuffle for another possible profile. It won't be 100% accurate, it's here to show how usual it is for a Riot Gun Buddy owner to have a whole backstory like this.
The two simple 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 a project about them and that their story would stay anonymous. Only the how and when mattered. There was a loose script early on for follow-up questions, all of which are answered in the FAQ, but after a few hundred conversations it wasn't needed anymore, fully memorized. The gap between 550+ approached and 440+ logged is just reality: some ignored it, laughed at it, some left before seeing it, some didn't have enough information to write down. The ones logged are the ones who answered with something real.
Some myths are dead.
One pattern is real.
One thing is 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, streaming, IRL events, and content creation were the primary methods. The split of how many surprised even me, and it changes how you should think about who actually has one.
"I'll play Jett & Sage, they get chosen more often."
Even though those are the most picked agents, that doesn't reflect that they help you get one.
"I'll buy expensive skins so they 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 most."
There is no correlation. Developers play across every gamemode and every rank.
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 and both regions show the same pattern. That part translates everywhere.
How is it that sometimes you don't see people with a Riot Gun Buddy through your whole play session? In one example, one day, one session, turned up nine Riot Gun Buddy owners across fifteen games. Other days went by for weeks without a single one. The gap between those two realities has no explanation in the data, not time of day, not region, not gamemode. Some days maybe every third lobby has an owner. Most days none do.
That question, how often you can meet them, is still open. It might be nothing, or it might lead to a discovery about Valorant's "trust factor" matchmaking system. 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 and got banned.
It was over, or so it felt.
My birthday, of all days. A clip from the skin trolling hit 118K views overnight. Went to sleep happy with a huge bang.
Woke up, the account was banned.
First reaction was panic. Thought Riot had mistaken the project for cheating, which it wasn't. Two years of work felt wasted since that clip is what people saw. That was the worst thing that could happen this deep into the project, and for a while it felt like the only explanation.
Thought: mistaken for cheating.
An automated sweep targeting cheat-adjacent clip tags caught the account as a false positive based on hashtag triggers rather than manual review. Not the project, not the research, just an aggressive algorithm flagging viral gaming clips.
The appeal sent to TikTok and Riot did nothing. That handle was gone. From that point the project went private, no content, no posting, just collecting quietly and verifying everything. Vanguard operates 24/7; if this were illegal, the account would have been banned years ago. Riot confirmed the research is clean to publish, with the strict condition that the method remains private so nobody falls for dangerous fake copycats.
Riot Support was contacted before publishing anything about the project. The response confirmed: talking about the project and its findings is fine. One condition was attached, the method used to find owners stays unnamed. It does, and it will.
Research approved by Riot Games, support ticket 123260509.
Four people offered.
I said no every time.
"Nah, I don't want one. This could mean this whole project is for the buddy, not the truth."
I never offered it to myself. Four separate times, four different people with contact at Riot asked if I wanted one. 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. This was never supposed to be about me getting a Riot Gun Buddy - it's about the buddy itself, and about the answers nobody else had. If it ever comes, it should be because 3 years of work and 550+ conversations earned it, not because someone felt generous in a lobby while the spreadsheet was open.
Wasn't planning on this.
Then it happened anyway.
I'd been talking with Trevor for a while - a Riot employee I connected with through the project. Nothing planned, just staying in touch.
My family had already booked a trip to LA. Completely separate from any of this.
Once I knew I'd be in the area, I told Trevor. Asked one thing, and one thing only: a photo in front of the HQ sign. Didn't want to take up his time. Didn't want to cause any trouble. Just a picture.
"He came back with a proposition - me, my brother, and his girlfriend, on a tour of Riot HQ in Los Angeles."
Obviously said yes.
A few days later, we showed up. My brother filmed the whole thing. Getting acknowledged by an actual Riot employee, walking through the real HQ - because of a spreadsheet that started as two questions in a lobby - still doesn't fully feel real.
Recorded. Full walkthrough of the tour is being cut into its own video. Follow to catch it when it drops.
The database stays open
till the end of time.
The video, once it's out, 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 bigger. Every submission moves it 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.
Add your story to the database.
Got a Riot Gun Buddy? Two questions, two minutes. Every submission makes the research stronger and gets the project closer to Part 2.
Add my storyThe LOADOUT Project.
A broader Valorant data initiative, mapping how players spend, behave, and play at scale. Anonymous, voluntary, already running in the background.
Learn moreThe "I Create" Buddy Project.
A second, smaller dataset tracking owners of Riot's creator-recognition buddy. Same approach, different item.
Learn moreOne person. Simple spreadsheet.
3 years later.
Hi, it's me. I'm the creator of this website and the whole project. I started thinking about the RGB Project in 2022, but didn't start actively collecting data until September 2023. Previously Community and Social Media Manager at SteelSeries and 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 I've built since: 3 years, over 550+ in-game conversations. I didn't know it would end up 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. 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 would exist
without these people.
Early groundwork, the people who helped build the foundation this whole project runs on.
Every community member who showed up consistently in the early days to help test questions and organize research behind the scenes.
For the early groundwork that started everything.
For helping figure out the first way of finding RGBs without looking through profiles.
For years of patience, teaching me everything I needed to know.
Behind the scenes, the people who kept the private side of the project alive.
The biggest one, for the behind-the-scenes work that still helps to this day, and for carrying the LOADOUT Project alongside me.
The Valorant tracker Ryleq builds, and the reason LOADOUT can exist and stay compatible with it at all. valstats.site · RGB Project × VALSTATS →
For optimizing our data workflows and tracking spreadsheets to handle hundreds of entries.
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 establish contact with Mr. Lowlander.
My friend circle, the people who kept me going at my worst.
Without that group of 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. 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.