Valorant
Valorant (stylized in all caps) is a 2020 first-person tactical hero shooter video game developed and published by Riot Games. A free-to-play game, Valorant takes inspiration from the Counter-Strike series, borrowing several mechanics such as the buy menu, spray patterns, and
Accuracy while moving. Development started in 2014 and was teased under the codename Project A in 2019; the game was released on June 2, 2020 for Windows. It was ported to the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S in June 2024. A mobile version, Valorant Mobile, launched in China on August 19, 2025.
Gameplay
Valorant is a team-based first-person tactical hero shooter set in the near future. Players play as one of a set of Agents, characters from different countries and cultures. In the main game mode, players are assigned to either team.
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 objectives. Every player starts each round with a “classic” pistol and one or more “signature ability” charges.
Other weapons and ability charges can be purchased using an in-game economy that awards money based on the previous round’s outcome, kills, and completed objectives. The game features a variety of weapons, including sidearms, submachine guns, shotguns, machine guns, assault rifles, and sniper rifles. Each weapon has a unique shooting pattern that players must control to shoot accurately.
As of August 2025, the game offers 27 agents to choose from.Five agents are unlocked at account creation, with the rest unlocked using an in-game currency called Kingdom Credits. Kingdom Credits can be acquired by playing games or completing daily and weekly tasks, and can be spent on unlocking
New agents or cosmetic items can be obtained in the game. Within the first 28 days of release, new agents can only be unlocked using Valorant Points, through special recruitment events, or via a linked Xbox Game Pass subscription. Valorant Points are an in-game currency purchased with real money and can be used to buy cosmetic items or new agents.
Unrated
In the standard non-ranked mode, the match is played as best of 25, with the first team to win 13 rounds winning 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.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.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.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 reaches 4 (in contrast to 5 for competitive), the winning team gets all the victory credit for every round needed to bring them to 13, with the forfeiting team receiving losing credit.A team gets only three chances to surrender: once in the first half, once in the pistol round of the second half, and once more in the second half.
Spike Rush
In the Spike Rush mode, the match is played as best of 7 rounds, with the first team to win 4 rounds winning 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, as well as multiple different power-up orbs.
Replication
The Replication gamemode went live on May 11, 2021.During the agent select, players vote on which agent they would want to play as. At the end of the time, or after everyone has voted, the game randomly selects one of the player’s votes. The entire team will then play as that agent, even if one of the players has not unlocked that agent. It is a best of nine, with the players switching sides after the fourth round. Players can buy guns and shields with a pre-set number of credits. Abilities are pre-bought. Weapons and shields are reset every round.[35] This gamemode was removed in patch 7.0.
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.
Duelists specialize in attacking and entering a bomb site for the team. Riot’s official definition for duelists is “self-sufficient fraggers.”Duelists mainly create space for their team while entering onto a site, giving their teammates information, and making entering a site easier. Their abilities tend to consist of flashes which blind enemies, and movement-based abilities that allow for them to cover large distances faster
than other agents. This type of ability kit allows for duelists to shine best when they are able to catch players off guard and get impact frags. On attack, duelists are most often expected to play forward, leading the attack. They are expected to be in front of everyone to get opening picks on enemies since their abilities often give them a competitive advantage when gunfighting an enemy. On defense, duelists will be holding choke points where enemies try to enter sites. Due to the mobility in their kits, they are able to get a pick and reposition, giving their team a numbers advantage.
Sentinels are the defensive line, which specializes in locking down sites and protecting teammates from enemies. Their abilities mainly consist of static ‘objects’ that are obstacles to the enemies. These objects can give the team valuable information and/or deal damage. On attack, sentinels can use their abilities to cut off certain parts of the map or set up ‘objects’ that can ensure the enemy cannot flank without being noticed. On defense, sentinels can use their abilities to slow enemies from entering a site. This provides valuable time for the sentinels’ team members to come and provide defensive support.
Initiators plan out the offensive pushes. Initiators specialize in breaking through defensive enemy positions. Initiators’ abilities can consist of flashes but also abilities that can reveal the location of enemies. This information allows for attackers to know where enemies are and make taking a site easier. On defense, initiators can use their abilities to provide
information on where the attackers are going, as well as helping their teammates retake a lost site.Controllers specialize in “slicing up dangerous territory to set their team up for success.”They use their abilities to create coverage or clear out areas of space with crowd control. To help their team enter into enemy territory, their abilities consist of some kind of smoke, as well as molotovs, stuns, or flashes.
With their smokes, controllers can control sightlines on the map, making it safer to move through the map without getting seen. On offense, controllers can smoke off certain sightlines and use their crowd control on common defensive spots to force enemies into the open. On defense, controllers can smoke and/or use crowd control on entryways to delay or discourage the enemy team from moving forward.
Development
Valorant was developed and published by Riot Games, the studio behind League of Legends.Development started in 2014, within their research and development division.Game director Joe Ziegler is credited with the initial idea of Valorant while formulating potential games with other Riot developers.David Nottingham is the creative director for Valorant.Trevor Romleski, former League of Legends‘s designer and Salvatore Garozzo, former professional player and map designer for Counter-Strike: Global Offensive are its game designers.Moby Francke, former Valve developer, who has been art and character designer for Half-Life 2 and Team Fortress 2, is the art director.
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.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.
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.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.
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.
During development, Riot made promises to work towards a ping of less than 35 milliseconds for at least 70% of the game’s players.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.Due to the increase in internet traffic during the COVID-19 pandemic, Riot has had trouble optimizing connections to their promised levels.As of July 29, 2025, Riot carried out their transition to Unreal Engine 5 with update 11.02 on all platforms and regions.
Esports
Open-qualifiers era (2021–22)
In November 2020, Riot Games announced the Valorant Champions Tour (VCT), which is a year-long tournament circuit consisting of three levels:
- Champions – the world championship
- Masters – international competitions in mid-season, divided into many stages
- Challengers – regional competitions which are qualifiers for Masters
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 Pacific).
Partner System
Reference:
- Champions: the world championship
- Masters: international competitions in mid-season, divided into two stages
- International Leagues: four competitions divided by international territory (Americas, China, EMEA, Pacific) which are qualifiers for Masters and Champions
Non-Partner System
Reference
- Ascension: four competitions divided by international territory (Americas, China, EMEA, Pacific) which serve as promotion into the International Leagues
- Challengers: regional competitions which are qualifiers for Ascension
