Riot Games are committed to growing the VALORANT competitive community, and the Ignition Series partnership program and continuous tournaments are proof that they are heading in the right direction. The studio wants to focus on nurturing the VALORANT esports scene internationally, and not just in North America and Europe. The recent tournament calendar revealed for Latin America gives teams the opportunity to compete across several tournaments run by Temporada de Juegos, LVP, and GGTech. It is not the only region with exciting tournaments coming up. Following the major success of RAGE VALORANT JAPAN INVITATIONAL, the organization is coming back in August with RAGE VALORANT JAPAN Tournament, featuring ten times the prize pool.
Riot Games’ Global VALORANT Esports Strategy Lead, Kasra Jafroodi, shared exclusively with THESPIKE.GG a glimpse of what the future holds for VALORANT and their plans to replicate this roadmap for other regions in the world. The studio wants to experiment with different esports roadmaps to see what works with every region and grow their competitive scenes.
“We created the Ignition Series to ensure that VALORANT players around the world could compete in and watch competitive VALORANT as soon as possible. It’s also been very helpful to develop our learnings about what drives interest and competition.
Riot regions around the world have been evolving their approach with tournament cadence and structure as we’ve learned more. We're continuing to keep an eye on all the events and closely listening to all the feedback,” shared Kasra Jafroodi with THESPIKE.GG.
This experimentation with what works in every region is definitely the way to go. However, putting down a roadmap for competitive VALORANT teams to know the upcoming tournaments beforehand should be a staple in every part of the world. The difference between them might be the number of qualifiers, main events, and amount of tournaments Riot Games is willing to hold.
The European scene for example mostly received invitational tournaments, with a few qualification spots open for the public. However, we are seeing this being turned around lately with The Vitality European Open tournament, featuring qualification rounds with the top 8 going forward to the finals. We will definitely wait and see what Riot Games have in store, but Jafroodi’s words indicate nothing but excitement towards the future of VALORANT esports.
How do you think Riot Games will evolve their approach to VALORANT esports based on the learnings of every region? Let us know your thoughts in the comments section down below.
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