Valorant, Riot Games’ latest F2P competitive FPS is now available in India after spending two months in closed beta. The game is also made available for KR, Asia-Pacific, OCE, Europe, Turkey, MENA, Russia, and CIS countries. The North American version will follow in a few hours. The same goes for Latin America, and South America (5 am PDT / 8 am EDT).
If you were wondering about the status of official servers for India, Sukamal Pegu, Publishing Head (South Asia) had this to say;
“Riot Games is highly committed to providing the India and rest of the South Asia region with an excellent gaming experience. While you’ll be joining the worldwide launch on June 2, the official servers which will support Middle East & South Asia will come later in the year.
Players in South Asia will be playing on the South East Asia servers (for now), and though you will experience a higher ping, you’ll still be able to engage in enjoyable competitive battles. Make sure you register with your actual home country and original Riot ID to make your future server transition easier!”
About the game
VALORANT is a 5v5, competitive, character-based first-person tactical shooter for the PC. VALORANT is a game of precise skill, high stakes, lethal gameplay, and clutch moments that rewards creative gameplay styles. In games of VALORANT, players lock in their agent for the entire duration of the match and then attempt to win a round-based, attackers vs. defenders, best-of-24-rounds fight.
In VALORANT, gunplay matters the most and Riot Games is wholly committed to ensuring a high-fidelity gameplay experience, including dedicated 128-tick servers for all players, for free; a global spread of datacenters aimed at less than 35ms ping for players in most major cities around the world; a custom-built netcode in pursuit of precise hit registration; and proprietary anti-cheat prevention and detection from day one. Shooting in VALORANT is precise, consequential, and highly-lethal – we want you to win on your skill and strategy alone.
Set on a near-future Earth, in VALORANT you choose from a global cast of agents, all hailing from a real-world location and culture. Each agent brings a unique set of tactical abilities they can use to gather information, fortify locations, scout for enemy intel, breach defensive sites, control territory, and more. Abilities create unique tactical opportunities for you to take the right shot.
Key Features:
- Precise, lethal, high-fidelity gunplay – A player with steady aim and a pistol will always beat an unsteady sniper. In VALORANT, fights can end in milliseconds, time-to-kill is low (most headshots are instant kills, most rifles kill in 3-4 bullets), and recoil is punishing. Every shot counts.
- A diverse arsenal of guns – All agents have access to all guns, which can be purchased via a round-to-round based economy. All guns have their own strategic value and depth of mastery in both recoil control and situational deployment.
- Agents with unique abilities – Abilities are designed to complement – not overpower – gunplay through tactical information and strategic support. Each agent brings a unique set of abilities that change how you approach a situation.
- Competitively tuned maps for thousands of hours of play – Each map in VALORANT is designed to support a wide variety of strategies and team compositions, leading to thousands of hours of play and mastery.
- A world fighting for its existence, a VALORANT squad to defend it – In the world of VALORANT, a diverse cast of hypernatural, battle-ready agents from across the world have come together to respond to a larger existential threat, with catastrophic, world-altering consequences on the line.
- Unprecedented Game Server Quality & Infrastructure
- Dedicated 128-tick servers, for free, for everyone – additionally, VALORANT servers upsample all player movement to 128 FPS, so even if your opponent is lagging due to a poor internet connection, VALORANT servers will automatically upscale their movement to be 128 FPS smooth
- Less than 35 millisecond ping for at least 70% of players globally – In 2014, Riot Games began working with ISPs to set up peering arrangements to get players onto the Riot Games network as soon as possible (called “Riot Direct”). Now Riot Direct has a global network of backhauls for VALORANT players, with points of presence in 35 cities around the world. The final result: a commitment to less than 35ms ping (even less in most major cities) for at least 70% of players around the world, and the ability to repair broken routes, load-balance congested routes, and add new circuits to serve more players in the future (so where there is demand, that 70% will go up)
- All of the above is in pursuit of our fight against “Peeker’s Advantage,” a common technical hurdle in shooter games where, due to poor or low-quality network and server issues, an attacking player can sometimes see (and shoot) a defending player before the defending player can react. VALORANT demands pixel-perfect, high-fidelity gameplay, and Riot Games is committed to providing a best-in-class technical experience to support it
- Anti-Cheat Technology & Proprietary Cheat Detection on Day One
- In-engine wallhack resistant ‘Fog of War’ – To combat wallhacks, VALORANT employs a unique ‘fog of war’ system that omits player locations until just before line of sight contact.
- Server-authoritative game architecture – All VALORANT games are server-authoritative, making it impossible for a player to cheat in game-defying ways, like speed hacks or teleportation hacks.
- Riot Games’ proprietary Vanguard cheat detection – VALORANT uses the League of Legends anti-tamper system in addition to a new anti-cheat platform, Vanguard, a Riot Games owned and developed cheat detection tool that allows for consistently evolving detection methods and the ability to instantly ban cheaters. Any game with a cheater detected will be ended immediately and forgiven for all other players.