50 Fun Facts About Valorant

Which company developed and publishes Valorant?

Riot Games developed and publishes Valorant; the Los Angeles studio behind League of Legends has been wholly owned by Tencent since December 2015.

Under what codename was Valorant teased in October 2019?

Project A was the working title Riot showed at its League of Legends 10th-anniversary stream on October 15, 2019; the name Valorant came the following March.

On what date was Valorant fully released for Windows?

Valorant launched worldwide for Windows on June 2, 2020, five days after its closed beta ended on May 28; beta keys had been handed out through Twitch drops.

Which earlier shooter series did Valorant borrow its buy menu, spray patterns and moving-inaccuracy from?

Counter-Strike supplied the template: Valorant's buy menu, recoil spray patterns and movement inaccuracy come straight from it, and Riot designer Salvatore 'Volcano' Garozzo had co-created the CS:GO map Cache.

Which agent can bring a dead teammate back to life with her ultimate?

Sage, the Chinese healer, revives a dead teammate with her ultimate, Resurrection; her Healing Orb restores an ally's health over a few seconds.

In an Unrated match, how many rounds does a team need to win?

A team needs 13 round wins; sides swap after 12 rounds, and an Unrated match tied 12-12 is settled by a single sudden-death round.

How long does the round timer give attackers to plant the Spike?

Attackers get 100 seconds (1:40) on the round clock to plant the Spike; if the timer runs out with no plant, defenders win the round.

Which free pistol does every player get at the start of a pistol round?

The Classic is the free default sidearm handed to anyone without a pistol; every other gun, plus ability charges, must be bought with credits earned from rounds and kills.

What are Valorant's four agent roles?

Valorant's four roles are Duelist, Sentinel, Initiator and Controller; Riot describes duelists as 'self-sufficient fraggers' and controllers as the experts at 'slicing up dangerous territory' with smokes.

Which agent role locks down sites with static objects such as traps and walls?

Sentinels are Valorant's lockdown role: Cypher's trapwires and spy camera and Killjoy's turret and alarm bot hold ground with placed objects rather than pushes.

What is the in-game currency, earned by playing, that unlocks new agents?

Kingdom Credits, added with Episode 7 in June 2023, accrue from playing matches; an agent costs 8,000 of them once its 28-day recruitment event has ended.

Which Duelist heals or turns intangible by consuming soul orbs from enemies she kills?

Reyna feeds on soul orbs: Devour uses one to heal her rapidly, Dismiss uses one to make her briefly intangible, and her Empress ultimate boosts her fire rate.

What are the lowest and highest ranks in Valorant's competitive ladder?

The ladder runs Iron, Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum, Diamond, Ascendant, Immortal and Radiant; every rank below Radiant is split into three tiers.

Radiant rank is reserved for how many players per region?

Radiant is capped at each region's top 500 ranked players; Immortal and Radiant players are the only ones given a numbered leaderboard position.

What account level must a player reach before queueing Competitive?

Account level 20 is the gate; Riot introduced it, replacing the earlier ten-Unrated-wins rule, to make smurf and cheater accounts slower to spin up.

What rule replaced sudden death at 12-12 in Valorant's Competitive mode in 2020?

At 12-12 Competitive goes to overtime, where a team must win by two by taking both rounds of a pair; after each pair, players can vote to end the match as a draw.

In Spike Rush, how many rounds does a team need to win?

Spike Rush is first to 4 rounds out of a possible 7; every player gets the same random gun each round and every attacker carries a Spike.

How many round wins does it take to win a Swiftplay match?

Swiftplay is first to 5 rounds with sides swapping after round four, so a match runs about 15 minutes instead of the usual 35 to 40.

In Deathmatch, how many kills win the 9-minute free-for-all?

Deathmatch ends when someone reaches 40 kills or when the 9-minute clock runs out; everyone spawns with heavy shields, unlimited credits for any gun, and no abilities.

Which of these maps was built specifically for Valorant's Team Deathmatch mode?

Piazza was one of the three Team Deathmatch maps at the mode's June 2023 launch, alongside District and Kasbah; the first team to 100 kills wins.

Which limited-time Valorant Christmas mode arms everyone with a slow, one-shot launcher?

Snowball Fight debuted on December 15, 2020, as a 5v5 team deathmatch in which everyone wields a one-shot snowball launcher and grabs gift power-ups such as rapid fire and skates.

Which mode, similar to 'gungame', cycles teams through 12 random weapons?

Escalation, added in February 2021, hands both teams the same 12-step ladder of random weapons and abilities; the first team to finish every stage wins.

Valorant was built on which technology, before its 2025 migration to the next version?

Valorant ran on Unreal Engine 4 from its 2020 launch; Riot's 2025 move to Unreal Engine 5 kept the gameplay the same while modernising the engine underneath.

Riot promised competitive servers that update how many times per second?

Riot's launch pledge was 128-tick servers, meaning the server state refreshes 128 times a second, plus a ping under 35 milliseconds for at least 70 percent of players.

What is the name of Valorant's controversial kernel-level anti-cheat?

Vanguard loads a kernel-mode driver at Windows boot, which drew privacy complaints in 2020; Riot answered by offering a bug bounty of up to $100,000 for flaws in it.

Which two Windows 11 security features must be enabled for Valorant to run?

Vanguard refuses to start on Windows 11 unless TPM 2.0 and UEFI Secure Boot are switched on, the same two features Microsoft lists among Windows 11's minimum requirements.

Which two consoles received a Valorant port in 2024?

Valorant reached PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S on August 2, 2024, after a June beta; console players cannot match against PC, but cosmetics and progress carry across.

Valorant Mobile launched first in which country, in August 2025?

Valorant Mobile, built with Tencent's Lightspeed Studios, went live in mainland China in August 2025 on iOS and Android ahead of any other region.

Valorant's beta launch day drew 1.73 million concurrent Twitch viewers, second only to what?

The 2019 League of Legends Worlds final, also a Riot broadcast, held the Twitch record that Valorant's April 7, 2020 beta stream nearly matched; viewers tuned in hoping for beta-key drops.

Which game director is credited with the original idea for Valorant?

Joe Ziegler, Valorant's game director, came up with the concept while pitching game ideas with other Riot developers; David Nottingham served as creative director.

Which December 2020 event was the first Valorant tournament that Riot itself organised?

First Strike, Riot's first self-run Valorant tournament, held regional finals in early December 2020; 100 Thieves won North America and Team Heretics won Europe.

Which team won the first international Valorant event, Masters Reykjavik in 2021?

TenZ was on loan from Cloud9 at the time; Sentinels bought out his contract that June.

Which team won the first Valorant Champions, in Berlin in December 2021?

Acend beat Gambit Esports 3-2 in the Berlin final on December 12, 2021, and Turkish Operator specialist cNed was named the tournament MVP.

Which Brazilian team won Valorant Champions 2022 in Istanbul?

LOUD beat OpTic Gaming 3-1 in the Istanbul final on September 18, 2022, avenging their Masters Reykjavik loss; duelist aspas was tournament MVP.

Which North American team won Champions 2023 in Los Angeles, with Demon1 as MVP?

Evil Geniuses beat Paper Rex 3-1 in the final on August 26, 2023, after knocking defending champions LOUD out in the lower-bracket final; Demon1's Operator play earned MVP.

Which team's 2024 Champions win in Seoul gave China its first international Valorant trophy?

Edward Gaming beat Team Heretics 3-2 in the Seoul final on August 25, 2024, and duelist ZmjjKK was named MVP of the tournament.

Which player became the first to win Champions twice, taking the 2025 title with NRG?

Ethan Arnold won Champions 2023 with Evil Geniuses as a flex player, then added the 2025 title with NRG, making him the first two-time Champions winner.

Which city hosted Valorant Champions 2025?

Paris hosted Champions 2025, the first Valorant Champions staged in France; earlier editions had gone to Berlin, Istanbul, Los Angeles and Seoul.

How many franchised partner teams did Riot originally select for the VCT's 2023 partnership era?

Riot picked 30 partner teams, ten each for the Americas, EMEA and Pacific leagues, and opened the 2023 era with all of them at LOCK//IN in São Paulo.

Which team won Masters Tokyo 2023, the first international Valorant LAN held in Japan?

Fnatic beat Evil Geniuses 3-0 in the Masters Tokyo final on June 25, 2023, completing a 2023 in which they had also won LOCK//IN in São Paulo.

Under what Chinese name did Valorant launch in China in July 2023?

Valorant went live in mainland China on July 12, 2023, as Wuwei Qiyue, rendered in English as Fearless Contract; Tencent publishes it there.

In which country was Valorant's path-to-pro Premier mode first alpha-tested before going worldwide?

Brazil hosted the Premier alpha from November 2022, before a worldwide open beta in April 2023; Premier teams play weekly matches and a playoff, and winners can reach Challengers.

Which Valorant map has three Spike sites instead of the usual two?

Haven, set in Bhutan, was the first Valorant map with three Spike sites, A, B and C, stretching defenders across more ground than the usual two.

Which 2021 mode made a whole team play as one voted-for agent, until patch 7.0 removed it?

Replication, launched in May 2021, had each team vote for one agent that all five players then used; it was first to five rounds with abilities fully stocked each round.

Which Valorant sniper rifle kills a fully armoured player with one shot to the body?

The Operator is Valorant's heaviest sniper: a bolt-action rifle whose 150 body damage and 255 headshot damage both kill a fully armoured player outright.

At which studio did Valorant's art director Moby Francke spend years before joining Riot?

Valve employed Moby Francke for much of the 2000s, where he drew the character designs for Half-Life 2 and the painterly look of Team Fortress 2.

In which year did development of Valorant begin inside Riot's research and development division?

Work on Valorant started in 2014 inside Riot's research and development group and stayed secret for five years; the closed beta came in April 2020.

What was the title of the gameplay video with which Valorant was announced on March 1, 2020?

'The Round' was a full-length look at a single Valorant round, released with the name reveal on March 1, 2020; the closed beta followed on April 7 with Twitch-drop keys.

Valorant's engineering lead Marcus Reid previously worked on which shooter?

Gears of War 4, The Coalition's 2016 Xbox and Windows shooter, was Marcus Reid's previous project; at Riot his team reworked Unreal Engine 4's rendering to reach 30 fps on minimum-spec PCs.

Which Japanese team finished third at Masters Reykjavik 2022 after beating DRX and Team Liquid?

ZETA DIVISION beat Team Liquid and DRX to reach the top three at Masters Reykjavik 2022 in April, a run that set off a Valorant boom in Japan.