It’s over.

Drops, that is. And the VALORANT Closed Beta shortly thereafter. Let’s talk about the end of the world and the welcoming of a new one.

World-wide* launch is June 2

• You’re probably aware of this, but it’s worth reminding. There are still some regions that we can’t get to just yet, like Vietnam, India, the Middle East, and a few others, but everyone is welcome.

VALORANT Closed Beta drops stop now

• If you still haven’t gotten closed beta access but were eligible, you’ll have an exclusive Twitch/VALORANT player card sitting in your inventory at launch (June 2). It doesn’t make up for not getting closed beta access, but we’ll see you soon enough.

Closed Beta queues end on May 28 at 9:00am PT for all regions

• Want to get your last game in? You can start it at 8:59am PT. At 10:30am PT, we’re taking the servers fully offline for a gentle scrubbing.

All progression will be reset EXCEPT...

• … for whatever you earned in the Closed Beta player pass (which includes that exclusive gun...

Hi everyone,

If you’ve been following along, you probably heard our announcement that VALORANT is launching to most of the world* on June 2 (yes that also includes you OCE!). That’s in a few weeks (we also said that)!

We also know that in announcing our launch date we raise a number of questions, with the largest being the title of this piece:are we ready? Every week we’ve touched on a number of questions, concerns, and hot topics, but it’s an entirely different conversation when launch is around the corner.

What we’ve learned in Closed Beta

It’s worth repeating the main goals of the VALORANT Closed Beta: to begin the technical rollout of our game, anti-cheat, and infrastructure; to watch you play (and break) VALORANT in millions of ways we couldn’t have possibly imagined; and to get your opinion on what we should be prioritizing in the months to come.

Here’s what doesn’t stop with Closed Beta: this isn’t your last chance to give us feedback, nor is this the only time we’ll be...

Hey, VALORANT! I’m Preeti Khanolkar (Producer), and I’m here to talk to you about how we bring weapon skin fantasies to life while staying within the boundaries of VALORANT’s competitive integrity. Together, Sean Marino (Art Lead) and I run the Premium Content team, which is responsible for all the cosmetics you see in the game: weapons skins, gun buddies, sprays, and more. But today, we’d like to focus just on weapon skins!

Last week, Marino outlined our principles for weapons: A gameplay-first approach with a gun for every situation. And that’s not changing, even when your Vandal spits molten fire or blasts sleek sci-fi energy. Our goal for skins is to give players another way to express who they are and what they love without ruining another player’s gameplay experience.

We'd like to give you a behind-the-scenes peek at how we work so you can see how we design skins not just for personalized expression, but for appreciation—to immerse you in your chosen fantasy. And if you want...

New week, new us. From the last week to this one, our family and community of VALORANT has grown exponentially, and we’re happy to be able to see players in Latin America, Brazil, and Korea getting into the closed beta! Welcome! And now that you’ve all been playing VALORANT, we assume you also have endless questions that we’re here to answer.

We’re going to keep our intros short because there are three topics we’d like to cover. The first is one we’re passionate about: peeker’s advantage. Specifically, in the times when an enemy player comes around the corner and appears to be running and gunning while still being accurate. Here’s David Straily, VALORANT’s technical engineering lead to explain:

Hi all! Let’s get right to it:

---- PEEKER'S ADVANTAGE ----

Until humanity learns to move faster than the speed of light, peeker's advantage is never going away. It’s something that exists for all games. That being said, our goal is to minimize it as much as possible in VALORANT. Philosop...

Hey VALORANT sharpshooters, I’m VALORANT Art Lead Sean Marino here to talk about everyone’s favorite topic: the guns! Specifically, discussing what defines a VALORANT weapon and how we brought these principles to life in the game. First, let's start with this quote from Trevor Romleski, lead game designer.

“BULLETS STILL KILL WIZARDS”

This phrase was something that we latched onto early to help define the gameplay pillars and visuals of the VALORANT weapons. It was the foundation for how we would flesh them out within the game.

First came a pledge to uphold certain standards of the genre. With a tactical shooter, there are expectations around gameplay and weapons that we strived to sustain, regardless of what the VALORANT IP would become.

Then we cemented a “gameplay first” approach. Let’s create a gun for every situation. There should not be an overpowered or “best” weapon in the arsenal. It should be all about trade-offs between power and economy. No weapon should feel like it on...

Coming at you faster than my Iron rank placement, it’s Patch Notes .50. These are the kind that send wiki writers squirming, so let's get to it.

All rifles have been updated to make single-tap and burst fire more efficient. The idea here is to support the viability of all rifle shooting styles (tap, burst, spray) when used in optimal situations.  This is tied to “Gun Recovery Time,” which we’ll touch on more in the notes below.

Sage, Cypher, Omen, Viper, Brimstone, and Phoenix have all undergone changes, in part to better align them with their intended roles and to balance abilities that we found to be either too weak or too powerful in common situations.

Other highlights: The cost of some Agent abilities have been tuned to better reflect their impact on the game. We also lowered the cap on the amount of credits a team can bank during a match to help opposing teams catch up—so, you can’t go over 9,000.  And the Spike now automatically falls when it gets stuck in an elevated location...

… And we’re back! We’re a month into the global rollout of the VALORANT Closed Beta, and while we’re all just a little tired, it’s also been a lot of fun. Last week (if you caught it), we announced that our top priority heading into May was to get as many of our regional servers online and running as soon as possible, and we’re so happy to be speaking to a new set of regions today. Welcome Korea, welcome Brazil, and welcome Latin America.

Speaking of Latin America, now we’re getting to the real challenges of this closed beta. As of writing this (it’s April 29 right now), we’re still not sure if we’ll have our Mexico City datacenters online for May 5. Dave Heironymus, VALORANT’s technical director, will have more insights on this.

But first... we want to talk about something that’s close to our hearts and an inevitable challenge we’ll need to overcome in a competitive game like VALORANT: player behavior. So I’d like to introduce myself more formally—I’m Anna Donlon, the executive pr...

Hi everyone, Paul “Arkem” Chamberlain, VALORANT’s not-at-all-scary anti-cheat lead, here to talk to you about anti-cheat (surprise). I’ve popped up a few times already to talk about specific anti-cheat systems and give quick updates or high level overviews on cheating topics—but I wanted to take some time today to go over our anti-cheat strategy from top to bottom.

Consider this the What, Why, and How of VALORANT anti-cheat.

Firstly the “Why,” as in, why am I talking about this so much and why are we collectively spending all this effort fighting cheating? Frankly, it’s because I believe that it’s what players (that’s all of you) expect and demand from their tactical shooters. Along with our other commitments to competitive integrity, anti-cheat is a core requirement, the “table stakes” for a serious competitive experience.

Next the “What.” What exactly are we trying to accomplish for anti-cheat in VALORANT? The goal is to build a trustworthy gaming experience by making cheating a...

Welcome current and aspiring VALORANT players, my name is Joe Lee and I’m the revenue lead for the game. Through the closed beta or elsewhere, you’ve probably already seen the work-in-progress VALORANT store and a small sample of the weapon skins and other cosmetic content available.

The Premium Content team and I hope you’ll be able to collect and customize your VALORANT experience into one that champions your playstyle, performance, or maybe just your taste in shiny weapons.

First and foremost: we care about making a great game. The collection of optional extras will never affect gameplay, so all you need to focus on is hitting your shots and going B, but then going A. Or going A, but going A.

Below, I’ll dive deeper into cosmetic content and how to get them. Here’s your quick summary:

• Unlock new Agents, weapon skins, player cards, and sprays by completing Agent Contracts
• Unlock weapon skins in the Store by using VALORANT Points
• “Evolve” certain weapon skins and go deeper on a t...

Can you believe we’re three weeks into the VALORANT Closed Beta? We wish it were four weeks so we can celebrate our one month anniversary, but we also don't want to seem clingy. Rejoice with a slew of patch notes full of quality of life updates.

Phoenix mains can look forward to the removal of two Run it Back bugs, you can now actually exit custom games with the click of a button, the rare cases where the Spike would get stuck in the map should be history, and Observer mode benefits from a few improvements (more on the way!).

You’ll see the addition of “Competitive mode” here and you’re gonna have to wait a little before it goes live. Yes, we’re excited too.

Read all the changes below.

Gameplay and Balance

Omen

• Omen now immediately becomes vulnerable and no longer appears dark after he leaves his alternate shadow form
  • If you were to find enemy Omen teleporting in, it was often confusing when you should shoot him to get the kill (vs. sending him back). This change is to both accou...

Another week of VALORANT Closed Beta in the books, and it looks like we’re getting (somewhat) into the rhythm of things. Over the past two weeks, we’ve been able to patch multiple times to address emergent exploits, fix many bugs (including a revolver-wielding camera that we thought was hilarious), and make our first (but definitely not last) balance change of the closed beta.

But a community at play is also one that never sleeps, and we’re already seeing new things to tackle. So without further ado, let’s get to some emergent topics.

We saw how much you all loved Paul Chamberlain, VALORANT’s anti-cheat lead, the first time around, so we brought him back to quickly chat about some additional Vanguard bugs he’s seeing in the wild, and some adjustments we’ve made from your feedback.

“We’ve been issuing updates for Vanguard to react to the latest developments in cheating technology. One of these updates had a negative impact on legitimate players, stopping them from playing VALO...

Hey VALORANT competitors. My name is Ian “Brighteyz” Fielding, and I’m writing as part of the Competitive team today to guide you through VALORANT’s Competitive mode, show you how it all works, and share some of the ‘why’ behind our team’s decisions. Competitive mode will be available soon after patch 0.49, starting with EU and NA.

VALORANT’s Competitive mode uses the same in-game rules and format as the Unrated mode, but with a focus on higher-stakes competition. VALORANT's competitive system is still in its early stages, and we plan to evolve it over time, but we have a core experience we wanted to share with you all in closed beta so that we can build and evolve the mode together. While we plan to keep Unrated mode always available, Competitive matchmaking may be disabled for short periods throughout the closed beta as we work to refine the mode and incorporate your feedback.

Our system aims to solve some of the common pain points we've seen players experience with competitive mo...

The past two weeks have been a whirlwind of activity as we keep stress-testing VALORANT, its server infrastructure, and underlying technology. We’ve learned many, many lessons over this short period of time and want to stay open and transparent in how we keep going. So on that note, we’re spinning up a weekly ‘State of the Closed Beta’ post where we can answer questions and discuss topics we’re seeing raised all around the world.

First, now that the honeymoon is over with some VALORANT players (two weeks!), we’re seeing some real discussion happening on every competitive players’ favorite topic: game balance. In particular? Raze. And how a damage-oriented agent can exist in the tactical shooter space. Here’s VALORANT’s lead game designer, Trevor Romleski, to talk about Raze, how we’re reacting to community feedback, and why she’s important for the current roster.

“Raze has been a polarizing character in VALORANT, we’ve seen feedback ranging from ‘Raze is fine’ to ‘Pls delete ...

Hey, look at us. Patch notes in a closed beta. Who would have thought? This short and sweet patch addresses the giant Raze in the room, cameras that somehow learned how to shoot, and some map updates.

Raze is lethal, no doubt, and we predict savvy players will perform better against her over time. Still, we made some light changes that should bring Raze’s offensive pressure closer to the other agents. We’re also buffing melee to give players in the early rounds a better way to deal with Sage’s Barrier Orb—while still making it a calculated risk. Don’t worry Sage mains, your Slow Orb now slows those bunny hoppers, too.

And we’re booting the phrase “camera-gun” back to English spy films where it belongs.

Here’s what the VALORANT devs have for you in patch notes 0.47+ (the number carries over from our alpha).

Gameplay and Balance

Melee damage

• Melee attacks now inflict double the damage per hit to destructibles, including
  • Sage’s Barrier
  • Haven’s metal double doors
• Why?
  • There wer...

Hey esports fans! I’m Whalen, also known as “Magus,” writing to you on behalf of the VALORANT esports team to share some initial thoughts on esports, VALORANT, and how we hope to combine the two.

We come from a range of esports, sports, and competitive gaming career backgrounds, but all of us are huge fans of playing and watching FPS games. For us, working on VALORANT and helping to develop its competitive ecosystem—especially as it grows into the professional space—is daunting, humbling, and inspiring all at once. There’s no doubt that, as a hyper-competitive experience, VALORANT has the ingredients to be a successful esport and we have big dreams for what this can be, but we want to be thoughtful in how we put it all together.

Our aspiration is to build an esport worthy of your lifelong attention and interest. We plan to do so guided by three core principles: competitive integrity, accessibility, and authenticity.

• Competitive integrity means that we want aspiring pros to...