Valorant (stylized as VALORANT) is a free-to-play first-person hero shooter

developed and published by Riot Games, for Microsoft Windows. First teased under
the codename Project A in October 2019, the game began a closed beta period with
limited access on April 7, 2020, followed by an official release on June 2, 2020.
The development of the game started in 2014.

Contents
1 Gameplay
1.1 Unrated
1.2 Spike Rush
1.3 Competitive
1.4 Deathmatch
1.5 Escalation
2 Agents
2.1 Duelist
2.2 Sentinel
2.3 Initiator
2.4 Controller
3 Development
4 Release
5 Reception
5.1 Anti-cheat software
6 Esports
7 Mobile spin-off
8 References
9 External links
Gameplay
Valorant is a team-based first-person hero shooter set in the near future.[2][3][4]
[5] Players play as one of a set of agents, characters designed based on several
countries and cultures around the world.[5] In the main game mode, players are
assigned to either the attacking or defending team with each team having five
players on it. Agents have unique abilities, each requiring charges, as well as a
unique ultimate ability that requires charging through kills, deaths, orbs, or
spike actions. Every player starts each round with a "classic" pistol and one or
more "signature ability" charges.[3] Other weapons and ability charges can be
purchased using an in-game economic system that awards money based on the outcome
of the previous round, any kills the player is responsible for, and any actions
taken with the spike. The game has an assortment of weapons including secondary
guns like sidearms and primary guns like submachine guns, shotguns, machine guns,
assault rifles and sniper rifles.[6][7] There are automatic and semi-automatic
weapons that each have a unique shooting pattern that has to be controlled by the
player to be able to shoot accurately.[7] Different agents allow players to find
more ways to plant the Spike and style on enemies with scrappers, strategists, and
hunters of every description. It currently offers 16 agents to choose from.[8][9]
They are Brimstone, Viper, Omen, Cypher, Sova, Sage, Phoenix, Jett, Raze, Breach,
Reyna, Killjoy, Skye, Yoru, Astra, and KAY/O.

Unrated
In the standard non-ranked mode, the match is played as best of 25 - the first team
to win 13 rounds wins the match. The attacking team has a bomb-type device called
the Spike. They must deliver and activate the Spike on one of the multiple
specified locations (bomb sites). If the attacking team successfully protects the
activated Spike for 45 seconds it detonates, destroying everything in a specific
area, and they receive a point.[3] If the defending team can deactivate the spike,
or the 100-second round timer expires without the attacking team activating the
spike, the defending team receives a point.[10] If all the members of a team are
eliminated before the spike is activated, or if all members of the defending team
are eliminated after the spike is activated, the opposing team earns a point.[3] If
both teams win 12 rounds, sudden death occurs, in which the winning team of that
round wins the match, differing from overtime for competitive matches.
Additionally, if after 4 rounds, a team wishes to forfeit that match, they may
request a vote to surrender. If the vote is unanimous, the winning team gets all
the victory credit for every round needed to bring them to 13, with the forfeiting
team receiving losing credit.[11] A team gets only two chances to surrender: one as
the attackers and the other as the defenders.

Spike Rush
In the Spike Rush mode, the match is played as best of 7 rounds - the first team to
win 4 rounds wins the match. Players begin the round with all abilities fully
charged except their ultimate, which charges twice as fast as in standard games.
All players on the attacking team carry a spike, but only one spike may be
activated per round. Guns are randomized in every round and every player begins
with the same gun. Ultimate point orbs in the standard game are present, but there
are multiple power-up orbs instead.[12]

Competitive
Competitive matches are the same as unranked matches with the addition of a win-
based ranking system that assigns a rank to each player after 5 games are played.
Before you can play in competitive games, you will need to win 10 unrated matches
beforehand.[13] In July 2020, Riot introduced a "win by two" condition for
competitive matches, where instead of playing a single sudden death round at 12-12,
teams will alternate playing rounds on attack and defense in overtime until a team
claims victory by securing a two-match lead. Each overtime round gives players the
same amount of money to purchase guns and abilities, as well as approximately half
of their ultimate ability charge. After each group of two rounds, players may vote
to end the game in a draw, requiring 6 players after the first set, 3 after the
second, and thereafter only 1 player to agree to a draw. The competitive ranking
system ranges from iron to radiant. Every rank but Immortal and Radiant has 3
tiers.[14][12] Immortal & Radiant are reserved for top 500 players in which there
is a number associated to their rank allowing players in the top 500 to have a
metric in which they can compare how they rank up to others at their level.[15]

Deathmatch
The Deathmatch mode was introduced on August 5, 2020.[16] 14 players enter a 9-
minute free-for-all match and the first person to reach 40 kills or the player who
has the most kills when time is up wins the match. Players spawn in with a random
agent, and all abilities are disabled during the match which indulges pure gunplay.
Green health packs drop on every kill, which set the player at maximum health,
armor, and ammunition, unless the player is using a machine gun, which only gives
the player an additional 30 bullets.[17]

Escalation
The Escalation gamemode was introduced in February 2021 and is similar to the
"gungame" concept found in Counter-Strike and Call of Duty: Black Ops, though it is
team-based rather than free-for-all with 5 players on each team. The game will pick
a random selection of 12 weapons to move through. As with other gungame versions, a
team needs to get a certain number of kills to advance to the next weapon and the
weapons get progressively worse as the team moves through them.[18] There are two
winning conditions, if one team successfully goes through all 12 levels, or if one
team is on a higher level than the opposing team within 10 minutes. Just like
Deathmatch, players spawn in as a random agent, unable to use abilities, as the
gamemode is set for pure gun fights. Though, abilities like Sova's shock darts,
Raze's boom bot, and rocket launcher, are abilities that everyone gets to use as a
weapon. After a kill, green health packs drop, which replenishes the player's
health, armor, and ammo to its maximum. The gamemode also has auto respawns on,
respawning players in random locations around the map.[19]
Agents
There are a large variety of playable agents available in the game. Agents are
divided into 4 roles: Duelists, Sentinels, Initiators, and Controllers. Each agent
has a different role which indicates how the agent is usually played.

Duelist
Duelists are the offensive line, which specializes in attacking and entry fragging
for the team.

Duelists include Jett, Phoenix, Raze, Reyna, and Yoru.[20]

Sentinel
Sentinels are the defensive line, which specializes in locking down sites and
protecting teammates from enemies.

Sentinels include Cypher, Killjoy, and Sage.[20]

Initiator
Initiators plan out the offensive pushes. Initiators specialize in breaking through
defensive enemy positions.

Initiators include Breach, KAY/O, Skye, and Sova.[20]

Controller
Controllers specialize in setting their teams up for success. They use their heavy
utility to control sightlines on the map.

Controllers include Astra, Brimstone, Omen, and Viper.[20]

Development

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Valorant was developed and published by Riot Games, the studio behind League of
Legends.[21][5] Development started in 2014, within their research and development
division.[2] Joe Ziegler, Valorant's game director, is credited with the initial
idea of Valorant while formulating potential games with other Riot developers.[2]
David Nottingham is the creative director for Valorant.[2] Trevor Romleski, former
League of Legends's designer and Salvatore Garozzo, former professional player and
map designer for Counter-Strike: Global Offensive are game designers for Valorant.
[22] Moby Francke, former Valve developer, who has been art and character designer
for Half-Life 2 and Team Fortress 2, is the art director.[23][24]

Valorant was developed with two main focuses: making tactical shooters and e-sports
more accessible to new players, and creating a game that would attract a large
competitive scene, while solving many of the points of criticism voiced by
professional players from games in the genre.[25][26][27] Games aimed at large,
active communities and player bases, typically free-to-play games like Fortnite or
Riot's own League of Legends, tend to put an emphasis on a wider array of system
performance improvements and game stability rather than newer technologies or
graphics as a way of making sure they're as accessible as possible. In interviews
leading up to the game's launch, game director Joe Ziegler and producer Anna Donlon
said that Valorant was made for people playing their first tactical shooter just as
much as it was for professional players, and that accessibility of the game was a
large priority.[26]

Riot chose to develop Valorant using Unreal Engine 4, which the development team
said would allow it to focus on gameplay and optimizations rather than spending
time on core systems.[28][29] To meet the goal of a lower performance barrier so
more people could play Valorant, the team set notably low minimum and recommended
hardware requirements for the game. To reach 30 frames per second on these small
requirements, the game's engineering team, led by Marcus Reid, who previously
worked on Gears of War 4, had to make several modifications to the engine. These
modifications included editing the renderer using the engine's mobile rendering
path as base, or reworking the game's lighting systems to fit the static lighting
that tactical shooters often require, as to not interfere with gameplay.[28]
Unreal's modern underpinnings also helped to solve many of the issues that Riot set
out to solve from other games in the genre, and additional modifications helped to
meet the game's other goal of creating a suitable competitive environment,
including optimizing server performance by disabling character animations in non-
combat situations and removing unnecessary evaluations in the hit registration
process.[30][26][28] During development, Riot Games made promises to work towards a
ping of less than 35 milliseconds for at least 70% of the game's players.[31] To
accomplish this, Riot promised 128-tick servers in or near most major cities in the
world, as well as working with internet service providers to set up dedicated
connections to those servers.[31] Due to the increase in internet traffic during
the COVID-19 pandemic, Riot has had trouble optimizing connections and ping to
their promised levels.[32]

Release
Valorant was teased under a tentative title Project A in October 2019.[33] It was
announced on March 1, 2020, with a gameplay video on YouTube called "The Round".[5]
[34][35] The closed beta of the game was launched on April 7, 2020.[33] For a
chance to obtain a beta access key, players were required to sign up for accounts
with both Riot Games and the streaming platform Twitch and watch related streams.
[36] This beta ended on May 28, 2020, with the game being fully released on June 2,
2020.[37]

Reception
Reception
Aggregate score
Aggregator Score
Metacritic 80/100[38]
Review scores
Publication Score
Game Informer 8.5/10[42]
GameSpot 7/10[40]
IGN 9/10[39]
The Guardian 4/5 stars[41]
[icon]
This section needs expansion. You can help by adding to it. (February 2021)
Valorant has been compared to Valve's Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, with both
games having two teams of five attempting to plant a bomb,[4] and Blizzard
Entertainment's class-based shooter Overwatch, as both games have multiple classes
and characters catering to various playstyles.[43]

Austen Goslin of Polygon praised the beta of Valorant describing it as refined and
"one of the most fun tactical shooters I've played".[2] On the first day of its
beta launch, Valorant amassed the second most concurrent viewers for any game ever
on Twitch, with 1.73 million viewers tuning in across dozens of streams. Only
another title from Riot Games, League of Legends, has had more concurrent viewers,
when 1.74 million watched the 2019 World Championship final.[44]

It was nominated for Best Esports Game, Best Multiplayer and Best Community Support
at The Game Awards 2020.[45]

Anti-cheat software
The game has been criticized for its anti-cheat software, Vanguard, as it was
revealed to run on a kernel driver, which allows access to the computer system.[46]
OSNews expressed concern that Riot Games and its owner, Chinese technology
conglomerate Tencent, could spy on players and that the kernel driver could be
potentially exploited by third parties.[46] However, Riot Games stated that the
driver does not send any information back to them, and launched a bug bounty
program to offer rewards for reports that demonstrate vulnerabilities with the
software.[47][48]

Esports
Valorant, like many other competitive shooters, has become active within esports.
Riot Games decided to create the first tournament called "First Strike" to
establish a foundation for an esports scene to be created with the game.[49] In
November 2020, Riot Games announced the tournament series called VALORANT Champions
Tour (VCT) which is a year-long competition consisting of three levels:

VALORANT Challengers - regional competitions which are qualifiers for Masters

VALORANT Masters - international competitions in mid-season, divided into three
stages
VALORANT Champions - the world championship of the year
Teams will qualify directly for Champions via top places in Circuit Point Standings
of their region, based on results of Challengers and Masters. Teams who are at
middle places in Circuit Point Standings will have one more chance to qualify for
Champions by winning the Last Chance Qualifiers (North America, EMEA, South
America, Asia). VALORANT Conquerors Championship (VCC) - South Asian teams directly
qualify for the Last Chance Qualifiers of Asia through VCC.[50]

The VALORANT Champions 2021 is the competition that aims to declare the first ever
global champion of Valorant esports, will be hosted in December.[51]

Mobile spin-off
On June 2, 2021, Riot Games announced its plans to develop a mobile version of
Valorant, which would reportedly be the first step it intends to take to expand the
game's universe. The announcement was made in commemoration of the game's first
year, by which point it had reached over 14 million monthly active players since
its launch.[52]