The Valorant Beta is coming!

For a long time, all of Riot Games’ horses were hitched to one wagon – League of Legends. That wasn’t necessarily a bad thing – the company was, after all, responsible for the biggest and most popular esport in the world.

Then, after years of success, they decided to branch out, and late last year, announced that they were working on a series of new projects and games, not the least of which is the game Valorant. More details were released late last year and early this year – and now, finally, things are becoming more tangible.

© Valorant

A closed Valorant Beta

While fans still need to be patient for some time, a few lucky people are going to get a closer look soon. What we mean is the new closed beta that was finally announced. Set to launch on April 7^th, the Valorant beta will be accessible to players whose accounts fulfill certain requirements.

First and foremost, players need to have their Riot account connected to their Twitch account – and they need to watch specific streams that will give them access to the beta. Unlike traditional beta signups that have players signing up with an email address and the like, this process is a lot more elaborate and innovative.

Whether that reflects on the game remains to be seen.

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The release

The full game won’t release until summer this year – and that’s after years of development in secret. Other games that Riot is working on include the card game Runeterra, as well as another upcoming fighting game.

Valorant will be a free-to-play shooter similar to Blizzard’s Overwatch. While the game itself will be available worldwide, of course, the Beta will be restricted to the US, Europe, Canada, Russia and Turkey. Due to current events Riot is limited in where they can offer the beta easily – servers and services available are restricted to what’s available in the network now.

“Our plan was to bring the Valorant closed beta to as many players around the world as quickly as possible, but the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted those plans, compromising a wider global rollout. For now, we have to focus on the regions where we feel most ready, with more regions following in the months to come.” – Anna Donlon, exec. producer of Valorant.

The game

So far, Riot has revealed things in bits and pieces – such as the reveal of certain heroes, like the support character Sage. She’s a healer that can resurrect, slow enemies and, of course, shoot them. This is quite similar to the concept of Mercy, a healer in Overwatch.

In total, so far Riot have revealed eight of the characters in the game. Those chosen for the beta will be the first ones to find out about the line-up of the game, and more, of course – such as details regarding the maps, layouts and matches themselves. The rest of players will have to wait for summer before they get to play a hopefully polished version of Valorant.

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