Valorant is the big thing coming from the creators of the League of Legends, Riot Games. It’s not their first, second, or even third game this year but one of the four new titles they will be releasing all around this year. Valorant, in particular, is a game quite similar to Counter-strike, with two teams one planting the bomb and another one defusing it. No wonder it is called a CSGO killer, however, that’s a huge claim to make. To make a good competitive eSports game one needs much more than just a CSGO clone. The game needs to be captivating and engaging to the viewer and not only the player. Every eSports championship is a way to showcase the best players out of all, which requires the best delivery as well. The game itself should be giving “easy to pick up hard to master” vibe. Otherwise, if mastering is too easy and the skill ceiling is low, the viewership won’t have as much interest in watching the tournament.
It’s easy to notice that Tencent and Riot Games are trying to expand in densely populated countries. They are based in China, but Riot has started expanding in India as well with strong hints being dropped about the creation of the dedicated Indian servers. Riot Games is extremely popular all around the country already with players even creating change.org petitions to create dedicated Indian servers. In fact, Valorant is so anticipated in India that there are online bets already coming in on multiple eSports betting websites. Some of them are even offering casino bonuses for Indian players, which are great considering the popularity of the service.
Let’s get back to Valorant though where we have a couple of aspects to discuss before we can answer the main question in the title. Can Valorant be a good eSports game? Can it hold a candle to an already established and one of the oldest eSports games – Counter-strike?
Gameplay
This is one of the most straightforward parts of Valorant. One team is trying to plant a bomb, the other one is trying to prevent the plant or retake the site and defuse it. Gunplay is engaging enough, or so it seems from closed beta, and the graphics look absolutely stunning. We do not think that Valorant will have any issues in this aspect. It remains to be seen what kind of dynamic the game will have once it actually rolls out and Riot starts balancing it out with patches. It is worth noting that League of Legends, Teamfight Tactics, Legends of Runterra, and following the same pattern Valorant have active developers patching it and after every patch the gameplay strategies change. Hopefully the future of Valorant will also be dynamic and involving.
Company That Makes Valorant
If we want to discuss the future of Valorant, it’s crucial to understand the company that’s making it. Tencent and Riot Games have been a huge part of eSports with League of Legends netting the highest prize pool and most viewers on live streaming platforms year after year. From this perspective, it won’t be surprising if Valorant will have a tournament and really soon at that. As the gameplay is already old and tested out scheme and the company is not new to the scene of eSports.
Tournaments
As it was already mentioned with a PC game version of a cookie-cutter gameplay it’s not hard t imagine that the tournaments will be starting out very soon. Due to the success of the closed beta game, it is very much possible to have a small encouraging tournament even upon the official release of the game if not during the open beta period.
What can be the structure of the tournament?
We believe there can be two ways the championships can go:
- The normal way where teams face each other until only two of them remains at which point it’s called the finals and we have first two spots,
- League of Legends style where teams battle it out every weekend and earn spots on the final tournament,
- The third option would be to have smaller qualifying tournaments, which give the ability to win spots on the final big one.
Valorant Anti-cheat system
It’s important to note that Valorant’s anti-cheat system is raising a lot of questions with it’s elevated privileged status. See, it’s an anti-cheat system implemented in the game runs in Kernel, which means that it starts once you press the power button. Vgk.sys is the name of the process, which is responsible for this anti-cheat system. It is only natural that a lot of the players are having big doubts with such an intrusive way of protection. It has more privilege than the administrator account. Some of the users have also reported that deleting the game does not necessarily delete the anti-cheat program. The only way to remove it is to manually uninstall this through control panel, add or remove program.
Due to all of the backlash Riot Games has given the users the right to disable the controversial kernel-level anti-cheat system.
Conclusion
Valorant seems to have a lot of potential for a good eSports game. With Riot Games developing and managing it, it seems even more likely that the game will gain traction with the eSports crowd. More so in India, if the country is given dedicated servers. Tencent and Riot Games have been very compliant with the community quickly staying in communication via twitter about anti-cheat system concerns and reacting in the most rational way and enabling users to disable the system on their computers.
Tournaments should be expected as soon as the game hits open beta. With Riot it’s absolutely possible to even have a day one tournament as a grand opening to the season with all of the best players from the closed beta.
