Since early April, Valorant, Riot’s new mashup of Counter-Strike and super powers that not even tactical peeking can stand up to, has been in closed beta, available only to those who luck out while watching streamers play on Twitch. In a couple weeks, however, that’s going to change.
Per a press release from Riot, Valorant will launch in “the majority of regions worldwide” on June 2. Closed beta will wrap up on May 28, and during the intervening period, Riot will reset player accounts and patch in new content. The company is also expecting a high level of demand when the free game finally drops, so it plans to lower latency by deploying new servers in Atlanta, Dallas, London, Madrid, and Warsaw.
After Valorant releases, Riot intends on immediately hitting the update grind, with new modes, agents, and maps in the cards “shortly” after launch.
Valorant launched in a fairly polished state, but in recent times, the company has still been tweaking essential features like anti-cheat and headshot sound effects. There’s also the matter of toxicity and harassment issues, which despite a rudimentary report system and non-vocal communication options, have still been severe. Launching sans expanded tools to resolve those problems could lead to a community where toxicity is the norm, as it has with so many other competitive games.
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