Valorant
News
These are the best Spike planting locations on Haven
Olivia Richman
When playing on Haven, if you’re on the attacking team, you need to know the best places to strategically plant the Spike if you want to win. Where you choose to plant the Spike should not only play into your own team’s strengths and strategies but also the defending team’s numbers, agents, and possible location on the map. The Spike planting location can be the difference between a round being …
News
These are the best Spike planting locations on Split
Olivia Richman
Planting the Spike in Valorant requires a deceptive amount of thought. As the attacking team, where you place the Spike can be the difference between victory and defeat. It’s important to place the Spike in a location that not only takes into account your team’s strengths, weapons, and numbers, but the opposing team’s position, agents, and potential for a retake. Available since the first day of Valorant’s closed beta, Split …
News
Subroza fail leads to TSM elimination from Pop Flash Valorant event
Olivia Richman
The match was Team SoloMid’s to win. Well, until it wasn’t. TSM was dealt a devastating loss that eliminated the team from Flashpoint’s Pop Flash Valorant tournament after a surprise loss to Dignitas. TSM had victory within its grasp until Yassine “Subroza” Taoufik threw the match. In the final moments of the series, Subroza could be seen watching the Spike closely. He was the last remaining player on the team …
News
Immortals joins other esports orgs, postpones game in protest
M Alzamora
Immortals has postponed its match in FLASHPOINT’s Pop Flash series to bring awareness to protests against racial injustice, according to a tweet from the organization’s official Twitter account. The Immortals organization followed up the announcement encouraging its employees to use the time during which the match would have taken place to consider the country’s ongoing discussions around racial injustice and inequality. Immortals’ match in the tournament will instead take place …
News
Valorant spike exploit allows animation cancels for faster firing
M Alzamora
A new Valorant bug allows players to fire their weapons more quickly by hold the button used to plant the spike in order to cancel the weapon animation, testing shows. A video that originally appeared on the game’s subreddit showed that by initiating a spike plant and then picking up and switching to a weapon will cancel the weapon’s draw animation, allowing players to fire much sooner than they would …
Valorant
CSGO legend Skadoodle stepping down from T1’s Valorant roster
Jared Wynne
Retired Counter-Strike: Global Offensive legend and current T1 Valorant player Tyler “Skadoodle” Latham has announced that he will be taking a step back from the team’s active roster. The former Cloud9 star cited his limited hero pool and lack of overall impact with the Operator as the main reasons behind the decision. “I have been grinding to expand my agent pool and overall impact with the OP and will be …
News
These are the best locations to plant the Spike on Bind
Olivia Richman
Planting the Spike. It’s a big part of Valorant, and players want to ensure that they do it right. Planting the Spike isn’t as simple as just rushing to a point and slamming it down. It takes teamwork, strategy, and communication, just like it did to even get to the point in the first place. It doesn’t stop once players reach the point, either. When an agent places the Spike, …
News
shroud says he won’t go pro in Valorant or join 100 Thieves
Olivia Richman
Former Counter-Strike: Global Offensive pro Michael “shroud” Grzesiek has proven himself to be one of the top streamers in the world. During his first week back on popular streaming platform Twitch, shroud became the most-watched content creator there. As shroud continues to be popular for his latest Valorant streams, fans have started to wonder if he’d ever play the game professionally. He was once a very successful CSGO player, primarily …
How to find out if you’ve played with popular Valorant streamers
Olivia Richman
News
A new website is answering a burning question a lot of Valorant players have. Did they ever play against a famous streamer? The website, called VOD Search, lets players find out if they have ever been on someone’s live stream. Valorant players can find out if they’ve directly interacted with streamers while they were broadcasting matches by searching their in-game name. One of the site’s developers also noted that the …
Changing regions may wipe Valorant accounts, including skins
Olivia Richman
News
The Valorant community is not happy after it became clear that changing regions may completely wipe a player’s account. A frustrated player took to social media to describe their situation after they lost their rank, paid skins, and everything else on their Valorant account after moving from Australia to Belgium. A member of Riot Games support had been helping them change their region during the move. The email stated that …
DIGNITAS jumps into Valorant with team led by Fortnite star psalm
Jared Wynne
News
DIGNITAS is the latest esports organizations to form a professional VALORANT roster and it’s a colorful one, to say the least. DIGNITAS has announced the acquisition of four of the five players that played under the name Homeless. The roster is a motley crew of players from a number of different esports titles. This place is nice. Let’s take it. Welcome our new @PlayVALORANT team!???? @psalm ???? @dephh_csgo ???? @POISEDcsgo …
Valorant developers reveal the truth behind agent designs
Olivia Richman
News
Not everyone is happy about the addition of Killjoy. A lot of Valorant players feel like she lives up to her name thanks to an overpowered flame attack. She was also banned from upcoming Valorant tournaments because developers felt she isn’t “stable” quite yet. But this is all part of the process of designing new agents, according to lead character designer Ryan “Morello” Scott. In a new Dev Diaries video, …
Valorant patch 1.06 is bringing a big nerf to shotguns
Olivia Richman
News
Valorant developers have shared the notes for patch 1.06, and the focus seems to be on shotgun consistency. Valorant developers felt as though shotguns weren’t consistent enough, creating a lot of frustrating and possibly unfair in-game moments. This was mostly because of the fact that shotguns didn’t lose any accuracy when the weapons were shot in mid-air. “We hope to curb some of those encounters while still making them possible …
Cloud9 signs second, all-Korean Valorant roster of ex-OWL, PUBG pros
Jared Wynne
News
Cloud9 will start competing in Valorant, with a surprise twist. The organization has announced the signing of an all-Korean roster that will compete at the regional level. “With VALORANT esports seeing continued growth, we wanted to increase and broaden our involvement in the scene. Cloud9 has been invested in the Korean esports scene for quite some time, and we saw another opportunity to further support Korean esports in VALORANT. We …
shroud has become the most-viewed streamer on Twitch after return
Olivia Richman
News
Michael “shroud” Grzesiek was the most-watched content creator on Twitch last week. It all started when the popular former Counter-Strike: Global Offensive pro returned to Twitch on August 12. He surpassed 500,000 concurrent viewers just moments after going live on the streaming platform. He then hit 22,000 subscribers after only two hours of streaming. “It feels good. I wasn’t nervous at first, but then I saw the viewers climbing. I …
Cloud9 officially signs vice to complete pro Valorant team
Jared Wynne
News
Cloud9 has announced the signing of Daniel “vice” Kim as the fifth and final player for the organization’s new Valorant roster.“I’m super excited to join C9 Valorant. I competed in CS:GO professionally for about four years,” vice said. “I’m switching to Valorant mainly because after four years of competing in professional CS:GO I grew a little stale of it and I wanted to start a new chapter and I thought …
Valorant players complain about grind in weekly missions
Olivia Richman
News
Valorant’s Act II brought to players a new battle pass, meaning more cosmetics, skins, sprays, and player card artwork to unlock. One way to unlock these new additions to Riot’s original first-person shooter is through daily and weekly missions. These appear on the left side of the game’s main screen, with daily missions resetting each day. Each of the missions gives players a certain amount of experience points based on …
TSM win Pittsburgh Knights Invitational, beat Gen.G in finals
Olivia Richman
News
Team SoloMid is continuing to dominate the Valorant esports scene. The impressive Valorant squad took home a $6,000 prize at the Pittsburgh Knights Invitational after beating Gen.G in the three-game grand finals set. The win was all the more exciting for the squad’s fans since TSM had lost to Gen.G when they first faced off earlier in the tournament. TSM had beaten other top teams including Renegades and Immortals before …
Valorant players mad as footstep audio gives defenders advantage
Olivia Richman
News
Valorant players are once again asking Riot to fix the game’s footstep audio. Since Valorant’s release, developers have been improving the FPS game’s sound visualization. This includes changing weapon sound effects and the agents’ sound cues. One thing that still needs some audio improvement are enemy footsteps. This has been a complaint since the game’s beta. Former Valorant streamer Daniel “Dafran” Francesca showed his followers how noisy opponents are when …
There are some big changes coming to Valorant’s ranking system
Olivia Richman
News
Valorant’s competitive mode has been a source of frustration for amateur and pro players alike due to the first-person shooter’s controversial ranking system. Valorant game director Joe Ziegler addressed the negative feedback developers have been receiving about the ranking system. Ziegler revealed that the development team is “analyzing the ranking system top to bottom” to look for ways to improve competitive play. Hey everyone, on the design side we are …
Riot Games has long looked to expand its footprint beyond the success of popular MOBA League of Legends, and one of its biggest successes to date in this regard is the tactical shooter, Valorant. Blending traditional first-person shooter elements with unique and flashy hero abilities, Valorant seeks to combine the best attributes of tactical shooters and hero shooters into one cohesive experience.
Based on player feedback, the game has largely succeeded in accomplishing those aims. It’s not an easy balance, and it’s one that is arguably still tenuous, but Riot Games seems to be doing as good a job of it as most fans have hoped for.
What type of game is Valorant?
Valorant is a first-person shooter that represents a unique blend of the tactical shooter and hero shooter subgenres. There are some games that represent similar gameplay elements, but not many that offer the exact experience that Valorant puts forward to players.
The tactical shooter genre is often considered to have been defined by the release of the original Counter-Strike, a multiplayer mod for famed single-player PC title Half-Life that later became a standalone game of its own. While most multiplayer FPS games to that point emphasized prolonged battles between opposing players zipping around the game at high speeds, Counter-Strike slowed things down significantly and made players much more susceptible to each other’s firepower, requiring players to take a more tactical approach to play.
That slower and more tactical approach, combined with the lightning-quick nature of action when it does occur, proved reliably popular. That popularity can still be seen today with the ongoing success enjoyed by the Counter-Strike franchise, and it’s this gameplay type that represents the core of Valorant. It’s no accident that former Counter-Strike developers were drafted by Riot Games to help create Valorant during the game’s formative stages.
What differentiates Valorant from CS and other tactical shooters it that each of the game’s characters, called agents, wield a number of unique abilities. Some are typical for tactical shooters, like flashbangs and smokes, while others are wildly different, such as an ability that transports two players to an isolated dueling arena for its duration.
These agent abilities are more reminiscent of hero shooters, a subgenre that arguably got its start with the Team Fortress games but has best been popularized by Blizzard title Overwatch. The abilities, combind with the tactical considerations that are at the core of Valorant, separate it from most any other FPS experience available for play.
How does Valorant esports work?
Like many other popular competitive shooters, Valorant does have a thriving esports scene. That scene is differentiated by the way it’s run and controlled by developer and publisher Riot Games. Riot uses a model based on the success of its League of Legends esports scene, which sees the globe’s competitive players and team’s separated by region. These regions play out their own competitions in their sections of the world before coming together at regular intervals for international tournaments featuring the best teams from each individual region.
While League of Legends once boasted a variety of regions and regional types, Riot sought to simplify that model when setting up esports for Valorant. The game has only a handful of major regions, and these regions are held as largely equitable, each sending their best teams to international events leading up to the year-end VALORANT Champions event.
