Riot Games launch Valorant beta signups

Riot Games have been around for years, and for the last decade, they have been primarily known as the League of Legends company. But things are changing, as they taking everything they’ve learnt from running one of the biggest MOBAs on the planet, and applying it to different styles of games.

Valorant is their big bet on multiplayer shooters, and the reductive take on it would be that it’s Overwatch meets Counterstrike, a class-based fantasy shooter with high-speed precision team-based gameplay. Whilst it may be fairly derivative on paper, it’s going to come down to the execution to determine whether this game has any kind of long term appeal. Find out how it feels and plays yourself by signing up to the beta, which will launch on the 7th of May. Certainly, they’re in a strong position to recreate their success in the MOBA field with a shooter, but only time will tell if they are able to pull it off.

There’s an emphasis on pushing for responsive gameplay. Before they spoke about any characters or gameplay mechanics, Riots biggest priority was to talk about reducing latency at every stage of the game, with fast servers located all over the world, robust netcode drawing on Riots extensive experience with League of Legends, and serviceable but rudimentary graphics optimised for high framerate performance on a wide range of systems.

During the first stage of the open beta, it’s going to be open to players located in Canada, United States, Russia, Turkey, and Europe, other regions will have to wait. 

Don’t get too invested in your in-game progress during this beta, since Riot is being upfront that progress during this beta will not carry over to the main game. Players participating in the beta will, however, receive bonus in-game currency when the game is ready for launch.

The game does not yet have a full release date locked in, so this is your best chance to get your hands on the game for now. This does suggest that it is indeed a true beta, where aspects of the game are not fully locked in, and they’re looking to get real players into the game so they can tweak elements where appropriate. Don’t be too upset if there are problems and performance issues as they are still working on getting the game ready for full release.

Are you interested in playing Valorant? Are you a big fan of League of Legends intrigued by Riot turning to first-person shooters, or did you never play League of Legends but a big fan of online shooters. Let us know whether you’re going to be signing up to this beta.