VALORANT sets launch date, announces end to Closed Beta

Riot Games’ competitive esports title VALORANT finally has an official launch date and will end its closed beta on May 28.

In the latest at-home update from Executive Director of VALORANT, Anna Donlon, with the help of Game Director, Joe Ziegler, it was announced that VALORANT will be officially launched as a free-to-play title on June 2, 2020. The game’s current Closed Beta period will end on Thursday, May 28th.

VALORANT has remained the talk of the gaming community since it’s Closed Beta began on April 7th – now, almost two months later, Riot Games says they’re set for release. The announcement came as somewhat of a surprise, despite the VALORANT team originally aiming at an optimistic “Summer 2020” release. Valuable community feedback has allowed the VALORANT team to improve and get the game to a point where launching is the next logical step in the game’s development.

The announcement covers a couple of initial questions that are reasonably asked when it revealed that VALORANT will be launching in just two weeks’ time. The most discussed being, Is the game’s proprietary anti-cheat capable of handling a massive influx of potential threats? And is the software doing what it was intended to?

So far, VALORANT’s ‘Vanguard’ anti-cheat software has been hit or miss, but the team isn’t hiding from that.

"“We haven’t been perfect out the gate, but owning our own technology is what lets us be fast and communicative in our development—when you were concerned about Vanguard being on all the time, we put in a feature so you could disable it until needed.”“Now the real question: has Vanguard been effective at tracking and deterring cheaters? Well… yes to the first, and not yet to the second. With VALORANT being the grand unveiling of Vanguard, we’ve gotten a lot of inputs that help us understand what cheats – and forms of cheating – we can effectively deter with the platform.”"

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The other major question tackled in VALORANT’s announcement was, Is the game ready for launch? This is another valid question that was sure to be asked following the announcement only two months after the Closed Beta started.

Some would argue that the game still needs some time and that the Closed Beta should be extended while devs collect as much feedback on the game and anti-cheat as possible. However, I would tend to agree with a large majority that the game has reached unprecedented success for only being in Closed Beta. The next healthy step for this game is to allow anyone access and continue listening to the feedback from your player base.

Recent updates to the game have aimed to tackle the biggest issues players are experiencing in-game. Rumored to be in development for some time now, VALORANT will also be releasing a new Map and Agent. It will be interesting to see how the additions to the game alter the current Cypher-Sage meta.

Additional questions are tackled in the VALORANT announcement, so be sure to check it out for yourself here.