Valorant is a free-to-play first-person tactical hero shooter developed and published by Riot Games, for Windows. Teased under the codename Project A in October 2019, the game began a closed beta period with limited access on April 7, 2020, followed by a release on June 2, 2020. The development of the game started in 2014. Valorant takes inspiration from the Counter-Strike series, borrowing several mechanics such as the buy menu, spray patterns, and inaccuracy while moving.
Valorant was developed and published by Riot Games, the studio behind League of Legends. Development started in 2014, within their research and development division. Game director Joe Ziegler is credited with the initial idea of Valorant while formulating potential games with other Riot developers. David Nottingham is the creative director for Valorant. Trevor Romleski, former League of Legends's designer and Salvatore Garozzo, former professional player and map designer for Counter-Strike: Global Offensive are its game designers. Moby Francke, former Valve developer, who has been art and character designer for Half-Life 2 and Team Fortress 2, is the art director.
Valorant was teased under a tentative title Project A in October 2019. It was announced on March 1, 2020, with a gameplay video on YouTube called "The Round". The closed beta of the game was launched on April 7, 2020. For a chance to obtain a beta access key, players were required to sign up for accounts with both Riot Games and the streaming platform Twitch and watch related streams. This beta ended on May 28, 2020, with the game being fully released on June 2, 2020.
In 2020, Riot Games launched "First Strike", a tournament designed to establish a foundation for an esports scene to be created with the game.
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.
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. Players spawn in with a random agent as well as full shields, and 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 give an additional 30 bullets to each of their guns.
In November 2020, Riot Games announced the Valorant Champions Tour (VCT), which is a year-long tournament circuit consisting of three levels:
Snowball Fight is a limited-time gamemode that was released on December 15, 2020, and is only available during Christmas season. It is a Team Deathmatch game mode, with 50 kills to win. Abilities are not allowed to be used, and players spawn in as a random agent. The only weapon available is the snowball launcher, which is an instant kill, but slow, and uses a projectile-based arc. There is infinite ammo. Throughout the game a "portal" will spawn, delivering gifts, which each contain a random power up.
The Escalation gamemode was introduced on February 17, 2021 and is similar to the "gungame" concept found in Counter-Strike and Call of Duty: Black Ops, though it is team-based rather than free-for-all with 5 players on each team. The game will pick a random selection of 12 weapons to move through. As with other gungame versions, a team needs to get a certain number of kills to advance to the next weapon and the weapons get progressively worse as the team moves through them. There are two winning conditions, if one team successfully goes through all 12 levels, or if one team is on a higher level than the opposing team within 10 minutes. Just like Deathmatch, players spawn in as a random agent, unable to use abilities, as the gamemode is set for pure gun fights. Though, abilities like Sova's shock darts, Raze's boom bot, and rocket launcher, are abilities that everyone gets to use as a weapon. After a kill, green health packs drop, which replenishes the player's health, armor, and ammo to its maximum. The gamemode also has auto respawns on, respawning players in random locations around the map.
The Replication gamemode went live on May 11, 2021. During the agent select, players vote on which agent they would want to play as. At the end of the time, or after everyone has voted, the game randomly selects one of the player's votes. The entire team will then play as that agent, even if one of the players has not unlocked that agent. It is a best of nine, with the players switching sides after the fourth round. Players can buy guns and shields with a pre-set number of credits. Abilities are pre-bought. Weapons and shields are reset every round.
On June 2, 2021, Riot Games announced its plans to develop a mobile version of Valorant, which would reportedly be the first step it intends to take to expand the game's universe.
In 2023, Riot Games announced a partner team model for their Valorant Champions Tour. The 30 franchised teams played their first LAN tournament at the VCT LOCK//IN at São Paulo, Brazil, which officially marked as the beginning of the VCT 2023 season. These partnered teams compete in 3 regional leagues to qualify for Masters and Champions.
The official Valorant Discord server has become the second largest gaming and fifth largest community overall on the social platform by May 2023.
The Team Deathmatch gamemode was announced on June 15, 2023, and went live on June 27 with patch 7.0. This gamemode combines and borrows elements from the standard unrated mode as well as the regular deathmatch mode. It is a free-for-all gamemode where players are split into two teams with five players each. Each match lasts for 9 minutes and 30 seconds, and the first team that reaches 100 kills win. If neither team has reached 100 kills at the end of the 9.5 minutes, then the team with the most kills wins. Each match is split into four stages, with the weapon selection becoming progressively more powerful as players advance through the stages. Players are respawned in a spawn room after being killed. where they will be able to select and adjust their weapons loadout if needed. Unlike the regular deathmatch mode, players need to select their agents before the match begins, as agent abilities are allowed in this gamemode. Players can charge their agents' ultimate abilities either by acquiring Ultimate Orbs spawned randomly throughout the map, or by getting kills. Their ultimate abilities will be available for use after their ult percentages reach 100%. Unlike all other gamemodes, this mode is not played on the standard maps, but rather on its own set of three maps that are specifically designed for team deathmatch: Piazza, District, and Kasbah.