Is VALORANT ready for the launch? The developers speak out!

Yesterday we had great news about the future of VALORANT, the end of the closed beta for May 28th and the announcement of the official launch for June 2nd. Many of us question: will the game be ready at launch? To give some light on the answer, Anna "SuperCakes" Donlon and Joe "Ziggs" Ziegler inform us about the main goals for the release.

Why feedback helped the developers?

The closed beta process was focused on several points, from getting all the technical and infrastructure work done correctly to watching the players find some unexpected way to play VALORANT. One of the main points was to listen to the community in order to arrive at the release day in the right direction. Some things went well, while others did not.

Anti-cheat technology

Vanguard was in the eye of the storm from the beginning, and the VALORANT team knows it. The system had its flaws; but having a proprietary system that is also integrated with the game design from the beginning allows for quick adjustments if needed (such as when problems with temperature monitoring programs arose). The fight against cheaters is a long and time-consuming process and the system is still being optimized, but Riot Games is happy with the results obtained for the detection of cheaters. The auto-banning system is still supervised manually. The objective is that for the launch of the game, the ban-wave can be automated and be more aggressive than it has been up to now banning accounts. The commitment of the VALORANT team is to maintain constant development in the anti-cheat system, even if it is not mentioned.

Disruptive behavior

Eliminating toxic behavior in order to play without fear of harassment is important for a good gaming experience. The VALORANT team feels that they did not respond to this problem quickly enough, and that is why they announced the following points: As mentioned in the official announcement by Riot Games, improved automation to handle reporting including:

• Automated chat analysis for blatant violations of our community code
• Automated analysis of reports and escalation of punishment for common offenders
• 72 hour team chat restrictions for behavior violations
• 72 hour team voice restrictions for behavior violations

The collaboration of the players is key to this process. It is a great tool to develop effective systems to fight this problem.

Server status

One of the big problems they face is ISPs not routing players properly, they are working with the ISPs to solve this problem. With this problem solved and with the game’s launch, there will be more players available. This will allow games with less than 35 ms for most players, depending ultimately on geography. They are also focusing on getting more points of presence for Riot Direct to help players get better connected. In the short term, new servers will be located in Warsaw, Madrid, London, Atlanta and Dallas. They are also not satisfied with the latency of players in Colombia, Argentina and Eastern Europe. For the regions of Vietnam they will not be able to launch servers yet. For India and the Middle East there are plans, but for now the connections will go through SEA and EU respectively.

Is the game ready?

During the beta the VALORANT team learned about the direction to take within the game, about what is clever and what feels most unfair (like movement vs. walking accuracy). With the experience gained, the corrections in the future should be faster when a new problem arises, or when a map exploit has to be fixed. Outside of game balance, the intensity of VALORANT games was another recurring topic from the community, and that's why coming to the launch with an alternative game mode is on the list of things to do. This is just the beginning of what is planned to be a long journey. For this year, the goal is to provide new maps, agents, skins and ways to compete.

On June 2nd, VALORANT will be officially launched and a new story will begin. A game where styles are mixed, providing freedom to be creative and innovative and rewarding good decision making and aim. The esports world is also waiting to see how one of the games that promises to become a player in this environment evolves.