The Valorant Team

Hey! Let’s start with a quick note on Yoru from our Character Producer, John Goscicki:

Hey all, wanna touch on the Yoru changes we were hoping to get out by 3.02. Due to some unforeseen circumstances, the team is going to have to indefinitely delay the Yoru updates. We’re in a situation at the moment where certain resources needed to do this work are unavailable to us. As soon as we get a clearer picture of when we can ship these changes, you’ll be the first to know. Sincere apologies to everyone who has been looking forward to these.

What we do have is a lineup of new crosshair settings, the ability to shoot through Radianite crates, and a system to make it easier to revert AFK penalties due to server issues on our end.

There’s also the following Viper bug fix:

AGENT UPDATES

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After two sets of open qualifiers and main events, it’s time to determine the three teams that will represent North America at Masters: Berlin.

Here’s everything you need to know to watch the 2021 VCT Stage 3 - Challengers NA - Playoffs.

Tournament Overview

VCT Stage 3 - Challengers NA - Playoffs is part of the inaugural VALORANT Champions Tour: a year-long global circuit featuring three tiers of competition (Challengers, Masters, and Champions) across North America, South America, Europe, and Asia.

The eight teams competing in VCT Stage 3 - Challengers NA - Playoffs qualified through their results in Challengers Week 1 and Week 2. Now, the three tournament finalists will advance to Masters: Berlin, where they’ll have a chance to qualify for the first-ever VALORANT Champions.

VCT Stage 3 - Challengers NA - Playoffs will be a double-elimination bracket featuring best-of-three matches and a best-of-five grand final.

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In June, you voted for some of your favorite weapons to return for a limited time during Episode 3 with the Give Back Bundle, where a portion of the proceeds goes to charity.

Here are the results of our first in-game charity fundraiser: Global players like you raised more than $5.5 million for the Riot Games Social Impact Fund, in partnership with Impact Assets.

We can’t thank you enough for supporting the Give Back Bundle by casting your votes and expanding your weapon cache for a good cause. We look forward to partnering with you again to support local nonprofits with the Riot Games Social Impact Fund and be agents of change in your communities.

For Dani, placing no.4 on the North American VALORANT Leaderboards is simply the cherry on top for all his time spent practicing to go pro.

His pro journey began in earnest after he made a friendly rival of Tyler “Ninja” Blevins before getting the invite to join a pro team assembled in part by the big league streamer.

Dani, 21, is a Sova main and college student studying software engineering out of Canada’s capital. From as early as nine years old, Dani mastered FPS games like Combat Arms, Alliance of Valiant Arms, and of course, CS:GO.

“I was really into esports as a kid,” he said. “My favorite team was Cloud9 with Sean Gares and all them.”

The biggest hurdle to his shot at the pros, Dani said, was the lack of good PC hardware. After a two-year break for school, and a subsequent internship, Dani was finally able to buy a desktop that could keep up with the demand of high-level play.

It was around this time that VALORANT Closed Beta launched, and, ...

Hi again everyone! I’m Chris Stone, a weapons artist on the VALORANT Premium Content team. I last wrote about how our team collaborated to build the tech behind the Spline skins. Now that both League of Legends crossover skins are in-game, the team wanted to share how we got Ruination and Sentinels set off the ground, as well as how we used this as an opportunity to develop new “materials” for VALORANT skins.

OUR NEW MATERIALS

Sentinels of Light is Riot's big summer event, bringing the “Ruined” and "Sentinel" thematics to each of our games. Although VALORANT doesn’t occupy the same ...

More bug fixes in this patch while we continue to evaluate those large Episode 3 changes—especially KAY/O’s overall impact.

Hey look, we fixed the volume slider!

GAME SYSTEM UPDATES

• Changes made to how clipping is calculated, which should result in less clipping overall in your gameplay
  • Yes, things are still going to clip, but you will see a noticeable lack of hands, melees, abilities, and general effects poking through thin walls.

SOCIAL UPDATES

• Added a space between the Match Rank and Leaderboard Ranking for Immortal+ rankings in the Hover Card UI

BUG FIXES

Agents

• Sage can no longer place her Barrier Orb between the pyramids on Breeze to create a sliver peek
  • “Sliver peek” refers to a very small gap created by sandwiching two things and creating an advantageous line of sight.
• Fixed KAY/O’s textures a...

TL;DR: Team Besties was found to have utilized unregistered players during VALORANT Game Changers to gain a competitive advantage. Furthermore, Team Besties did not cooperate with the subsequent investigation. The players and manager of Team Besties are banned from any association or affiliation with a team in a Riot-sanctioned competition for 18 months - one year for ringing and an additional six months for non-cooperation.

Context

The Open Qualifier of VALORANT Champions Tour 2021: Game Changers North America Series 2 took place on June 19th and 20th. Team Besties registered Jenna “koi” Tang, Katie “kateuuu” Tran, Mia “kei” Leong, Jasmine “memrice” Huynh, and Jennifer “wetboosy” Li as players and Bella “soju” Rierad as their manager. As part of registration, each player acknowledged their understanding of and agreement to the VALORANT Global Competition Policy and the VALORANT Champions Tour 2021 Rule Set.

Team members must r...

Patch 3.0 was like an over-sized meal, where now we sit and let the food settle. 

As we hope you can tell from the bug fixes below, we’re still tackling a few issues, and letting the major Patch 3.0 changes play out while we spot some potential future changes.

BUG FIXES

Agents

• Sage’s can no longer place Barrier Orb on some projectiles while they’re in the air
• Fixed bug where Skye was able to activate the flash of Guiding Light while suppressed
• Fixed the ability to heal KAY/O while downed in NULL/CMD
• Fixed Sova’s Recon Bolt projectile from looking deployed for enemies when flying through the air

Social

• Fixed a bug where you were able to abuse text chat colors to impersonate system messages
• Fixed a bug where the invite button UI overlapped with Defender Coach UI in Custom Games
• Fixed bug where names were appearing as question marks if you had the “Use Generic Names f...

In May, we announced that Credit Karma had joined us as the Official Fintech Partner of the 2021 North American VALORANT Challenger Series. The free-to-use consumer finance platform — which currently boasts over 100 m...

Lore is only as good as its keepers, and if you’ve ever wondered just what’s going on in the VALORANT universe, Annie—who goes by “Cynprel”—has some stories for you.

At first, VALORANT was simply Cynprel's latest game.They were a heavy Apex Legends player but only ever lurked at the edges of that game’s lore community. VALORANT was the first game where Cynprel leapt from observer to content creator.

“I love being able to pick things apart. During the closed beta, I put together a reddit thread and was one of the few people ...

With a weekend of open qualifiers in the books, the top eight teams will now battle for ultimate victory at the second major VCT Game Changers event.

Here’s everything you need to know about the Verizon VCT Game Changers NA Series 2 Main Event, presented by Dignitas.

TOURNAMENT OVERVIEW

VALORANT Champions Tour (VCT) Game Changers is a year-long program with the goal of creating new opportunities and exposure for women and marginalized genders seeking to participate in VALORANT esports, through a combination of community events and top-tier competition.

Verizon VCT Game Changers NA Series 2 Main Event is a double elimination tournament featuring best-of-three matches until the grand final, which will be a best-of-five showdown. In addition to first-place prize money, winners will receive commemorative apparel and posters, courtesy of Dignitas.

COMPETING TEAMS

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Birthday’s over. Time for REFLECTION. All caps.

Act I guarantees a KAY/O, your choices from the Give Back Bundle go live, a fresh competitive scene drops, and the next Battlepass is joined by it’s cool older cousin—the totally free YR1 Event Pass.

AGENT: KAY/O

KAY/O is the latest Initiator on the VALORANT roster, stacked with gear to suppress, flash, and explode the smartest of plays. The anti-Radiant weapon is a machine unlike any other.

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Episode 3 will add a new way to recognize and reward you for your time playing in all VALORANT game modes—even retroactively! Your account Player Card will now display a numeric level based on how much you play, that goes up the more time you put in.

Since launch, we’ve looked at various ways to improve our progression system and Account Leveling is the first opportunity we jumped on for a number of reasons. The team will continue to investigate more ways to make the system even better, and we’ll keep you posted when we have more to say.

Read how it works below.

WHAT IS ACCOUNT LEVELING?

In VALORANT, we have many ways to reward those of you who play from an hour a day to all day. However, we lack ways to tangibly reward you based on your loyalty and time invested in the game, and not just Competitive play. Account leveling is our way to recognize and reward.

This is a new long term system for your account and can be found as a bo...

Aside from the below, don’t forget the rest that is coming as part of Episode 3 Act I, which you can read about in our summary. Now a word from our design leads:

While there are a lot of changes with this patch, they are focused around refining two critical components of the game: Increasing the importance of precise gunplay and expanding the tactical sandbox. 

When we think of VALORANT, we consider every map, weapon, and character to be a part of an ever-changing sandbox where you can use your skill and creativity to overcome any challenge you face. We believe VALORANT is at its best when you face a wide variety of unique ch...

By winning Masters: Reykjavik, Sentinels put the rest of the VALORANT Champions Tour on notice: North America is a force to be reckoned with. Now, the champions of Iceland must fight to defend their crown amid a loaded region, packed with NA teams eager to show their quality on the international stage. The road to Berlin is long, and time is short.

Here’s everything you need to know about the 2021 VCT Stage 3 — Challengers North America:

Stage Overview

The VALORANT Champions Tour is a year-long global circuit featuring three tiers of competition (Challengers, Masters, and Champions) across North America, South America, Europe, and Asia. The VCT consists of three stages, the first two of which have been completed by each region. We are now entering VCT Stage 3, which will conclude during September’s international VCT Stage 3 — Masters tournament held in Berlin, Germany.

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The Run it Back Bundle returns to kick off Episode 3—but with a twist. The gun skins included in the bundle are determined by your vote. And a portion of the proceeds will go to charity!

From June 2–7, vote for your preference in each of the four categories below to see what skins will come back at the start of Episode 3 in the Give Back Bundle. Winners announced June 16.

Purchase the bundle from June 22–July 8, and 50% of the proceeds from weapon skins and 100% from accessories in the Give Back Bundle, will go towards the Riot Games Social Impact Fund, in partnership with Impact Assets.

TL;DR: During VALORANT Masters Reykjavík, Zellsis violated rule 7.1.2 of the Global Competition Policy which mandates that players observe the highest standards of personal integrity and good sportsmanship at all times. As a result, Zellsis is suspended for the first Challenger Open Qualifier and first Challenger Main Event of Stage 3.

Context

On May 28th, during the team’s player check in and rule review session, Zellsis made a categorically offensive and discriminatory remark about a tournament official.

Sanctions

Offensive comments made on the basis of gender or race are in direct violation of the standards expected of players participating in the VALORANT Champions Tour. Accordingly, Zellsis is suspended for the first Challenger Open Qualifier and first Challenger Main Event of Stage 3. Any subsequent violations of this policy will result in increased penalties including suspension, forfeiture of pr...

I know, after skipping Patch 2.10 you expected fireworks. Just look at this patch as the quiet before the Episode 3 storm.

Not for nothing, Patch 2.11 should improve your framerate by 1% on average if you’re on a medium–high spec machine.

COMPETITIVE UPDATES

• Added a Leaderboard search bar to help you find players by name

MODES UPDATES

• Replication is back as part of our modes rotation and will replace Escalation for now

PERFORMANCE UPDATES

• Improved Client framerate by 1% on average for medium to high spec machines by optimizing abilities, equipment, and weapons in your inventory
• Optimized Agent and Environment mesh clipping calculations 

GAME SYSTEM UPDATES

• Fixed fonts for various regional languages to improve readability
• Updated ping wheel and radio wheel to ignore non-movement inputs while the wheel is displayed
• Fixed an a...

Share your Pride worldwide, with a set of VALORANT in-game items, available to redeem throughout the month of June.

Just visit our code redemption page, input the respective codes listed below to unlock the 7 Pride Player Cards and 2 titles.

PRIDE PLAYER CARDS

Pride // Rainbow - Code: [PRISMATIC]

Pride // Cotton Candy - Code: [COTTONCANDY]

Pride // Primary - Code: [PRIMARY]

Pride // Galactic - Code: [GALACTIC]

Pride // Sunset - Code: [SUNSET]

Pride ...

With one year of VALORANT in the books, the only proper thing to do is celebrate for a month. That’s why in June we kick off VALORANT YR1, a slate of events and opportunities—both in-game and out—to thank you with cool stuff for a year’s worth of headshots, Spike plants, and insta-locking Duelists.

If you weren’t around last year don’t worry, we’ll vouch for you when telling people you were into VALORANT before it went mainstream.

The YR1 events each have their specific start and run times (most of them, today!). We’ve assembled the basics for you below, but please know we’ll keep you alerted on the start and end times ...