In only a few days since the closed beta release of VALORANT, Riot has made it clear that they’re in it for a long run by starting to plan an esports ecosystem for their competitive shooter ahead of time.
Considering the hype currently being built around the game it’s of no surprise that Riot has already started securing the future of the game as an esport. The game broke several records even before its actual release by reaching 1.7 million concurrent viewers across Twitch on the very same day of its closed beta release.
On Tuesday, the devs of VALORANT mentioned in their blog post about how much they are enjoying their journey in the game. As Whalen “Magus” Rozelle writes, “For us, working on VALORANT and helping to develop its competitive ecosystem—especially as it grows into the professional space—is daunting, humbling, and inspiring all at once.” He further claims VALORANT has certainly got the qualities to be a successful esport and that they have big dreams about the future of the game.
Riot promises to build up the esports scene around the game based on three key factors – Competitive integrity, accessibility and authenticity. Whalen claims that they’ll make sure that “aspiring pros” get “a fair shot at reaching the highest levels of play through merit-based competition.” He further promises the players that the team will work tirelessly to ensure that matches are decided “based on a person’s skill and teamwork rather than external factors.”
The dev team is also cautious to not pace things up too fast so that it’d hurt the integrity of the game, “we’re not looking to force anything too quickly without knowing what’s best for esports fans.”
They also released VALORANT community competition guidelines which provides in-depth information to aspiring tournament organizers about the restrictions which are imposed, most notable of which is, while organizers can use the word “VALORANT” in the name of their competitions to promote their competitions they must not use the words “Championship”, “Champions”, “Season” or “League”. Medium and major tournaments have to take prior permission from Riot before using such words.
However the biggest restriction coming from Riot might be the requirement of every tournament to turn off blood.
This along with other features of the game like naming the bomb “spike” and naming the teams “attacker” and “defenders” instead of “terrorists” and “counter-terrorists” like CSGO will potentially provide a much better room for the esports scene to develop by attracting sponsors who were retaliated by CSGO for the same reason.
