Valorant
Valorant
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Valorant

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Valorant

Valorant (stylized in all caps) is a 2020 first-person tactical hero shooter video game developed and published by Riot Games. A free-to-play game, Valorant takes inspiration from the Counter-Strike series, borrowing several mechanics such as the buy menu, spray patterns, and inaccuracy while moving. Development started in 2014 and was teased under the codename Project A in 2019; the game was released on June 2, 2020, for Windows. It was ported to the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S in June 2024, albeit without crossplay between PC and console clients. A mobile version, Valorant Mobile (Chinese: 《无畏契约:源能行动》), launched in China on August 19, 2025, with a global release set at a later date.

Valorant is a team-based first-person tactical hero shooter set in the near future. Players play as one of a set of Agents, characters based on several countries and cultures around the world. In the main game mode, players are assigned to either the attacking or defending team with each team having five players on it. Agents have unique abilities, each requiring charges, as well as a unique ultimate ability that requires charging through kills or orbs. Every player starts each round with a "classic" pistol and one or more "signature ability" charges. Other weapons and ability charges can be purchased using an in-game economic system that awards money based on the outcome of the previous round, any kills the player is responsible for, and any objectives completed. The game has an assortment of weapons including secondary guns like sidearms and primary guns like submachine guns, shotguns, machine guns, assault rifles and sniper rifles. There are automatic and semi-automatic weapons that each have a unique shooting pattern that has to be controlled by the player to be able to shoot accurately. As of May 2026, the game offers 29 agents to choose from. Five agents are unlocked at account creation, with the rest unlocked using an in-game currency called Kingdom Credits. Kingdom Credits can be acquired by playing games or completing daily and weekly tasks, and can be spent on unlocking new agents or cosmetic items. However, within the first 28 days of release, new Agents can only be unlocked with Valorant Points (VP), Agent Recruitment Events, or by having a linked and active Xbox Game Pass subscription. VP is an in-game currency that can only obtained by purchasing it with real money, and it can be spent on cosmetic items or new agents.

In the standard non-ranked mode, the match is played as best of 25, with the first team to win 13 rounds winning the match. The attacking team has a bomb-type device called the Spike. They must deliver and activate the Spike on one of the multiple specified locations (bomb sites). If the attacking team successfully protects the activated Spike for 45 seconds it detonates, destroying everything in a specific area, and they receive a point. If the defending team can deactivate the Spike, or the 100-second round timer expires without the attacking team activating the spike, the defending team receives a point. If all the members of a team are eliminated before the Spike is activated, or if all members of the defending team are eliminated after the Spike is activated, the opposing team earns a point. If both teams win 12 rounds, sudden death occurs, in which the winning team of that round wins the match, differing from overtime for competitive matches. Additionally, if after 4 rounds, a team wishes to forfeit that match, they may request a vote to surrender. If the vote reaches 4 (in contrast to 5 for competitive), the winning team gets all the victory credit for every round needed to bring them to 13, with the forfeiting team receiving losing credit. A team gets only three chances to surrender: once in the first half, once in the pistol round of the second half, and once more in the second half.

In the Spike Rush mode, the match is played as best of 7 rounds, with the first team to win 4 rounds winning the match. Players begin the round with all abilities fully charged except their ultimate, which charges twice as fast as in standard games. All players on the attacking team carry a spike, but only one spike may be activated per round. Guns are randomized in every round and every player begins with the same gun. Ultimate point orbs in the standard game are present, as well as multiple different power-up orbs.

Swiftplay matches are simply a shortened version of the Unrated game mode. 10 players are split into 2 teams, attackers and defenders. Attackers must plant the spike while the Defenders must stop them. What differs Swiftplay to Unrated is that it is best of 9 rounds - the first team to win 5 rounds wins the match. On round 4, the team's players switch, as they would do in round 13 in the Unrated game mode. The game's currency system is different than Unrated, with players earning more credits earlier, allowing for more parity across the two teams. Swiftplay is meant as a quick game mode, averaging around 15 minutes per game, as opposed to around 40 minutes for Unrated.

Competitive matches are the same as unranked matches with the addition of a win-based ranking system that assigns a rank to each player after 5 games are played. Players are required to reach level 20 before playing this mode. In July 2020, Riot introduced a "win by two" condition for competitive matches, where instead of playing a single sudden death round at 12-12, teams will alternate playing rounds on attack and defense in overtime until a team claims victory by securing a two-match lead. Each overtime round gives players the same amount of money to purchase guns and abilities, as well as approximately half of their ultimate ability charge. After each group of two rounds, players may vote to end the game in a draw, requiring 6 players after the first set, 3 after the second, and thereafter only 1 player to agree to a draw. The competitive ranking system ranges from Iron to Radiant. Every rank except for Radiant has 3 tiers. Radiant is reserved for the top 500 players of a region, and both Immortal and Radiant have a number associated to their rank allowing players to have a metric in which they can compare how they rank up to others at their level.

Premier is a 5v5 gamemode that allows players a path-to-pro competitive game mode that is aimed towards players that wish to be a professional player. Premier was first introduced in alpha testing in Brazil before being rolled out worldwide by 2024. Players will need to create a team of five to compete against other teams in divisions. Each season will last a few weeks and the top teams will be invited to compete in the Division Championship, with winning teams able to be promoted to their region's Challengers league and therefore be part of the VCT ecosystem. This gamemode includes a pick-and-ban system for maps unlike all the other gamemodes where the players have to play the map selected by the system.

The Deathmatch mode was introduced on August 5, 2020. 14 players enter a 9-minute free-for-all match and the first person to reach 40 kills or the player who has the most kills when time is up wins the match. The players will spawn with a random agent, equipped with a max shield and an infinite supply of credits to buy any weapons from the buy menu. All abilities are disabled during the match, which indulges pure gunplay. Green health packs drop on every kill, which reset the player to maximum health, armor, and replenish the ammunition in each of their guns.

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