Yes! It's a bug, and we can fix it.

Games are built on approximations of the real world for performance reasons. VALORANT doesn't simulate the physics of a real explosion. This bug is a case where our approximation falls short. (1/9) https://twitter.com/mel_anji/status/1359588992421949441

All explosions in the game have an inner radius and an outer radius that can be tuned by designers. Think of the inner radius as the center of the explosion. Players take full damage from the explosion within the inner radius and no damage outside the outer radius. (2/9)

Players within the outer radius that are outside the inner radius take damage that diminishes as they get further away from the center of the explosion. In this screenshot, the inner/outer radius sizes are visualized by the black/cyan spheres. (3/9)

The first step of computing explosion damage is sweeping the outer radius for any players that could be hit. Players outside the outer radius can be safely ignored as they will always take 0 damage. (4/9)

Next, the game checks visibility from the center of the explosion to potential targets. Explosions don't deal damage through walls. If the explosion can't "see" a player, the player doesn't take damage. (5/9)

The visibility check traces a line from a few different starting points inside the inner radius and tries to find an unobstructed path to the player. In this case, it finds a path (the green line), and the player takes full damage. (6/9)

But in this case, the explosion is blocked by the crates. It fails to find a path to the player and does no damage. You can see all the attempts the game made to find a path visualized as red lines. Had even one of them reached the player, the player would take damage. (7/9)

This approach usually works. In very tight spaces like under the pallet in Mel's video, the visibility check fails and the player does not take damage. The pallet effectively eats the explosion. It's a bit more difficult to see; I've circled the failing visibility checks. (8/9)

The fix here is to either adjust the collision settings on the problematic pallet or to adjust the logic driving the visibility checks to better handle small spaces. (9/9)