Sheep Esports recently revealed a report where it was depicted that Riot Games – the parent organization behind the popular esports title Valorant was planning on “tailoring down” part of their incentive program for the VCT international league teams by focusing more on in-game cosmetic sales than content creation.
This effectively means VCT teams that have had multiple streams of revenue via Riot Games as their chosen representatives across their four international leagues.
This is executed via a process where a fixed stipend is paid through an incentive program where a share of the proceedings from the in-game sales of specific team’s cosmetic bundles and the Champions bundles are split between the developer and the teams.
One of the revenue streams even included the team’s viewership revenue on VCT content and co-streams. This led to teams signing content creators to co-stream their teams with Valorant.
According to Sheep Esports, a maximum of $400,000 was receivable by each team for meeting their content goals which was followed by a mention of how this structure has been changing every year at the VCT and that the focus for the year 2025 was on in-game item sales.
“Since those are performing incredibly well thanks to the generosity of our fans. All in all, we expect significant growth in the total amount of money paid to teams by Riot, continuing the growth trajectory from the past three years,” a Riot spokesperson told Sheep Esports.
This has made a lot of teams participating in the VCT unhappy because of such short notice before such impactful revenue-affecting moves. What do you think? Will Riot eventually even shake down the entire $400,000 incentive next year or is the program here to stay, let us know!
Until then stay tuned to Talkesport for more such interesting updates from the Valorant universe.
