Riot Games has outlined its esports vision for its much-hyped tactical team-based shooter Valorant.
The developer’s senior director of global esports, Whalen ‘Magus’ Rozelle, said in a post on the Valorant website that the game has ‘the ingredients to be a successful esport worthy of players’ lifelong attention and interest’ but Riot wants to ‘be thoughtful’ in how it puts it all together.
Magus outlined three core areas for Valorant esports: competitive integrity, accessibility and authenticity.
Magus said: “We want aspiring pros to have a fair shot at reaching the highest levels of play through merit-based competition.
“Accessibility is our promise that fans and players from all backgrounds will be welcome into the Valorant community.
“And authenticity means that we know this esport is yours and we hope to build it together with you.”
Magus added that Riot is not looking ‘to force anything too quickly without knowing what’s best for esports fans’ and that an initial early focus will be striking partnerships with players, content creators, tournament organisers and developers.
Riot has also revealed its community competition guidelines for Valorant and opened submissions for digital products at the Riot Developer Portal.
There have already been several Valorant community tournaments taking place, including ones from the likes of Euro Zone Esports and UK esports organisation Lions Creed.
In other news: Riot makes acquisition
Riot has acquired Hypixel, the developers of upcoming Minecraft-like block adventure game Hytale which is due to launch next year.
Hytale has more than 2.5m sign-ups for its beta.
Dylan Jadeja, president of Riot Games, commented: “Over the last 18 months, we’ve been fortunate to advise Hypixel Studios as they build toward their vision for evolving a game genre that reaches an incredibly diverse range of players around the globe.
“Now, as they prepare to enter the next chapter, we’re thrilled to take our partnership to the next level through this acquisition. We look forward to supporting Hypixel Studios’ journey through the development process, helping them grow, and learning from them as well.”
Hytale is one of several games Riot has in development, including a beat ’em up, top-down dungeon crawler, esports management game and more.
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.
