The closed beta for Valorant began on April 07 in North-America, Europe, Russia and Turkey. Servers for Latin America, Brazil and South Korea went live a fortnight ago. Riot Games’s foray into the first-person shooter domain has wreaked havoc in the PC gaming scene.
The game has received heavy engagement and applause from several enthusiasts. Being in a beta phase, Valorant is receiving frequent updates mending bugs, balancing agent abilities and map fixes.
In the initial days after going live into the beta phase, the game shattered records on Twitch. Valorant peaked at 1.72M concurrent viewers breaking Fortnite’s record 1.68M peak. The ranked competitive mode is already live despite the game being in the beta phase.
The definite release date isn’t revealed, however, Valorant is expected to go live in the summer later this year. Riot Games is anticipated to add numerous other regions including Japan, South East Asia, Middle East and Oceania in the near future prior to the official release.
The COVID-19 pandemic is having a severe impact on the global rollout of Valorant. Hence the inclusion of other regions might take longer than expected. “None of these are excuses. They are amazing challenges for us to overcome as we bring Valorant to you. And we are so, so excited to be on this journey with all of you,” said Anna Donlon, Executive Producer for Valorant.
Not to worry, here’s a way to sneakily gain access even if your country hasn’t officially received servers or it isn’t listed under the regions eligible to gain beta access:
- Determine the closest region with access to Valorant beta that would provide you with minimum ping.
- Use VPN of that determined country while creating a Riot account.
- To cross check whether your VPN has worked or not, check the region of your Riot Account here.
- Login to your existing Twitch account or create a new Twitch account if you don’t have one.
- Link Riot account with your Twitch account through Settings in Twitch.
- Now, sit back and watch your favourite streamer streaming Valorant for at least a couple of hours.
- Cross your fingers and hope for the best!
The Valorant beta drops are randomised and it’s all about luck. It is likely that you might receive a mail from Riot Games or a notification on Twitch even when you are not watching any stream. It may take hours or a week at worst for you to receive the beta access.
Anything above 2 hours is pretty good for being eligible for the drop. It makes no sense to run live streams in the background while sleeping or running streams on multiple tabs.
There are several shady third party websites that are selling Valorant beta accounts. Mind you, it makes no sense to pay for a game that is free to play. And, Riot Games is taking stern actions against the websites as well as the buyers. Plenty of accounts that were sold earlier, got banned due to breaking user agreement.
