Riot Games has today announced a closed testing period for its upcoming competitive shooter game Valorant.
The closed beta will begin on April 7th 2020 for players in Europe, Canada, Russia, Turkey and the US.
It’s possible other regions will follow, ‘pending developments with the current COVID-19 pandemic’.
Riot Games has said that players’ closed beta progress will not carry over to launch, but that any Valorant Points bought during beta will carry over to the full version of the game, plus an additional 20% bonus as a thank you to early players.
For example, if a player buys 10,000 Valorant Points during the closed beta, they will have 12,000 points at launch.
Valorant is still due to release in the summer, with no specific release date confirmed just yet.
“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.”
Anna Donlon, Riot Games
Riot is collaborating with Twitch to give fans closed beta access to Valorant.
To be eligible for entitlement to the closed beta, players in the regions listed above can register for a Riot account here, then link their Riot account to a Twitch account.
Then after April 7th, when closed beta activates in the first few regions, fans will be able to watch specific Valorant streams highlighted on Twitch for the opportunity to gain access to the closed beta.
Anna Donlon, executive producer of Valorant at Riot Games, said: “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.
“We want to engage with players as globally as possible as quickly as possible, and so we’ll ramp up our player count as much as we can to test our infrastructure, but we won’t be letting everyone playtest Valorant until we’re absolutely sure we can handle it in this newly uncertain environment.”
Valorant was first announced last October as ‘Project A’, as part of Riot Games’ 10-year League of Legends anniversary celebrations.
For more info visit the Valorant website.
Dom is an award-winning writer and finalist of the Esports Journalist of the Year 2023 award. He graduated from Bournemouth University with a 2:1 degree in Multi-Media Journalism in 2007.
As a long-time gamer having first picked up the NES controller in the late ’80s, he has written for a range of publications including GamesTM, Nintendo Official Magazine, industry publication MCV and others. He worked as head of content for the British Esports Federation up until February 2021, when he stepped back to work full-time on Esports News UK and offer esports consultancy and freelance services. Note: Dom still produces the British Esports newsletter on a freelance basis, so our coverage of British Esports is always kept simple – usually just covering the occasional press release – because of this conflict of interest.
