Riot’s competitive FPS Valorant launches June 2nd

Riot Games have announced that their competitive first-person shooter Valorant is going to launch this June 2nd. The free-to-play shooter had a hugely popular closed beta that started just last month and in just a few weeks, literally, everyone with a PC will be able to play the promising shooter.

A new challenger in the competitive FPS market is readying to change things up next month. In just a few weeks’ time, Valorant could become the next big game to look out for. Not only is the shooter going to be instantly available to pretty much everyone with a working PC thanks to being free-to-play, but the developer has specifically targeted the game to work on a large number of PC systems.

It’s Riot Games we’re talking here about after all. The studio behind League of Legends that is running nicely even on decade-old laptops. As such, Valorant has some pretty big shoes to fill. If the closed beta of last month is anything to go by, the proper launch of it ought to be a massive ordeal. For weeks, the shooter topped Twitch charts. Riot Games has proven that they know how to do F2P right and there’s little question that skill is going to be the big factor in Valorant as well.

Over the course of this beta we’ve learned a lot about how we should be thinking about game balance, as well as how we can diagnose balance issues in the future. We heard you on issues with movement vs. walking accuracy, as well as times when it seems like enemies are swinging out and getting headshots while still appearing to be on the run. Expect to see us actively addressing these concerns, if they haven’t been already.

With the current pandemic having delayed many game releases, the surprise early launch date of June is possibly going to play even more into Riot’s hands. Overwatch and CS:GO – while still popular – are years old by now, and fans of high-profile competitive shooting are yearning for something new, something different. Valorant could very well become the next big Riot IP.

In a candid post on the game’s website, the developers have addressed several hot-topics like anti-cheat systems, the readiness of the servers, and the state of the development in general. And in the age of service games it should come as no surprise that the launch of the game is just the start of what looks like years of updates, improvements, and more.