Fans were hyped for the release of ranked play, but it looks like they’ll have to wait a little while longer to grind out their Radiant rank.
Valorant’s 1.02 patch was scheduled for June 23, but Riot Games’ Valorant game director Riot Ziegler announced on Twitter that the release of the game’s ranked mode would be delayed.
Two massive issues arose as the patch went live. The first problem showed up when players who had the “noclip” command bound to a key were able to use it in live matches. “Noclip” is a debug command used to allow players to fly around the map and through walls. It is normally used in games like CSGO and Valorant to see where grenades and utility abilities might land, but it was never intended to able to be used in a live match.
There was an issue that went live this morning that allowed for players who had noclip bound to use it in normal games. Until we can fix this on the game side and redeploy (which we’re working on as we speak) we’ve disabled cheats, which effects observer on custom games.
— Ziegler (@RiotZiegler) June 23, 2020
That was just the beginning of Valorant’s patch 1.02 rocky launch. In addition to the noclip bug, many players reported that they were somehow spawning in the enemy spawn zone at the start of some rounds. Ziegler led with the spawn bug before setting a new tentative release date for Valorant Ranked play for later in the week.
Update: bad news. We are investigating a reported issue in which players can every once in a while spawn in the opposing team’s spawn point. We are actively trying to fix this and get it out as fast as possible, but will not turn on competitive until it is fixed.
— Ziegler (@RiotZiegler) June 23, 2020
It’s an unfortunate start for Valorant’s competitive and esports scene. With exploits and bugs abound in patch 1.02, players and teams have to worry about bugs disrupting their practice schedules and routines. Ziegler announced that “cheats,” what Riot Games has decided to call commands like noclip and others available Valorant’s practice range, have been disabled entirely. Since patch 1.02 came with a buff to the agent Viper’s abilities, players won’t be able to practice with them as easily until these commands are turned back on.
The end to Valorant’s beta is looking increasingly premature. A live patch shouldn’t break the game in such a way, especially after the game’s beta was already selling cosmetics for a theoretically complete game. There was even a tweet applauding the beta’s participants for the number of bugs they helped fix.
Fans are understandably upset with this latest delay, especially because the spawn bug had been both reported and “fixed” during the game’s beta.
“VALORANT Closed Beta was an opportunity for us to learn what worked, what didn’t, and what you’d need from us to have the best experience playing VALORANT. With your help, here’s what we accomplished in the last two months. Thanks to players around the world for joining in,” Ziegler retweeted on Twitter.
“STATS! Numbers on a lot of the stuff that’s happened over the course of Beta. Who doesn’t love infographics? Thanks to our players for making all this cool stuff happen =),” he added.
It’s unclear what exactly caused these latest bugs, but in the end, all players want to do is play Riot’s fresh first-person shooter in a competitive setting. As of now, it looks like they’ll be waiting until at least the end of the week.
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