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“I play a game called Valorant and basically in ranked games there are like two halves of twelve rounds each and there is a well known curse among people that play the game that if a team is up 9-3 at the half then they’re cursed to lose the game. I swear it happens so much too like you’ll be easily winning the first half and it’ll be 9-3 and you’ll just lose bad in the second half. So yeah like me and my friends or even if you’re playing with teammates if you’re down 9-3 people will say like oh it’s the 9-3 curse we’re gonna win and stuff like that.”

Context
JC says that the 9-3 curse has existed since the early days of Valorant around 2020/2021 and pretty much everybody involved with the game knows what it is. He says he vividly remembers moments where he was up 9-3 and lost as well as moments where he was down 9-3 and came back, but doesn’t remember other comebacks or blown leads as vividly. JC says that more times than not, if the score is 9-3, someone will bring up the curse.

Analysis
As someone that also plays Valorant, the 9-3 curse is definitely a legend that has blossomed and stuck among the game’s folk group over the years. No one knows who started or popularized the curse, but it spread extremely fast orally through being mentioned in ranked games and by streamers. As such, it’s a great example of Peck’s discussion of digital folklore, as it was created online and spread asynchronously as well as orally and visually, and each time the 9-3 curse resulted in a comeback only served to add to the legend. The curse is not particularly evidence based, but because of its infamy as a curse, all of us in the Valorant folk group will always remember losing 9-3 leads way more than any other scoreline, which shows how the belief is social and situational because it fits into the lore and the Valorant world. For losing teams, the 9-3 curse has become a way to manage the uncertainty of the game’s result, and something to back you (or predict the future) as you try to mount a come back.