Turning Down 5 Gun Buddies.
To Protect the Dataset.
Five separate times, Riot developers offered to hand me the rarest cosmetic in Valorant.
I refused every single one. Here is why accepting it would have ruined 3 years of data collection.
I never asked for one.
They offered anyway.
The Fist Bump Buddy is the only item in Valorant that cannot be bought, unlocked through a battle pass, or earned via rank progression. Its distribution is entirely at the discretion of individual Riot employees. When you spend three years tracking down and interviewing hundreds of owners, you inevitably cross paths with the developers who distribute them.
Across multiple casual matches, community interactions, and direct discussions, five different people with Riot ties offered to drop a Fist Bump Buddy onto my account. Every single time, the answer was an immediate, unequivocal no.
The reason wasn't false modesty. It was methodological self-preservation.
"Nah, I don't want one. This could mean this whole project is for the buddy, not the truth."
The observer effect.
You cannot study what you alter.
In observational research, the observer effect is lethal. The act of observation alters the phenomenon being observed. The premise of the RGB Project is documenting unscripted lobbies from an untouched distance.
The moment you accept a gift from the developers you study, the entire investigation falls apart:
Taking money from the mafia.
Imagine a journalist exposing a money laundering ring. If that journalist accepts cash from the cartel, their credibility vanishes. Even if the reporting is accurate, taking the money poisons the investigation.
Dipping your hands in the pot.
You cannot investigate from a distance once you touch the reward. Dipping your hands into the pot makes you look like an insider. You stop being an independent observer and become part of the system.
Turning research into a hustle.
Accepting a developer buddy would ruin 500+ verified case files. Critics would dismiss years of lobby data as an elaborate hustle for a charm. Staying empty-handed keeps the entire dataset bulletproof.
Respecting the record.
500+ stories without shortcuts.
Over three years, I have logged over 500+ verified owners. I have heard stories from players who earned their buddy by de-escalating toxic voice chats, by organizing community charity tournaments, by playing thousands of hours with sportsmanship, or by random encounters where they simply made a tired developer laugh after work.
Taking a buddy simply because I run an investigation into the buddy would be an insult to every single person in that database. The project exists to uncover the truth behind how Riot awards them, not to bypass the process.