Valorant dev warns beta launch will be “bumpier than usual”
Riot GamesValorant executive producer Anna ‘SuperCakes’ Donlon has issued eager fans a warning ahead of tomorrow’s closed beta launch — things will not be as smooth as players will hope for.
The hype around Valorant is hitting fever pitch. Less than 24 hours out from the release of the game’s closed beta, players are sweating to get a taste of Riot’s five-versus-five tactical shooter for themselves.
However, while Riot are hoping it all goes to plan, they’ve warned the community that things will be “bumpier than usual.”
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During an April 6 dev update, SuperCakes gave fans an update on what to expect from the launch just one sleep away.
The game won’t be as polished as they would have hoped for, due to all employees moving to a work-from-home schedule, and that’s also impacted things outside of development. The infrastructure and quality assurance testing hasn’t been completed yet, and they’ve been open about that.
“Rolling out infrastructure as ambitious as ours requires a lot of travelling and physical shipping of servers,” she explained. “Your ping might not be as good as what we’re aiming for because physical data centers need to be built and set up.
“We [also] rely heavily on our partners for testing quality, hardware compatibility, performance — these are our biggest commitments to you,” she added. “Our ability to test and fix some of these things has taken a bit of a hit.”
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However, shipping Valorant now seemed more important than ever. Riot wanted to test how well they were tracking — even if it meant closing it off to certain regions. They’re asking players for “a bit of patience” as they scale up the launch, so everyone can try the game.
“The plan was to bring the Valorant closed beta to as many players as possible from around the world as quickly as possible, but for now, we will have to start on focusing on the regions we feel are most ready.
“We will be ramping up our player count as high as we can to test our services, but we will not be letting everyone in at once.”
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As for a push-back of the Summer 2020 release window? Riot are still running on the same schedule they had back in October for Valorant and are feeling “pretty optimistic” of launching worldwide on time.
However, things are still too early to call. As things crop in the beta test, Riot will have to adapt, and the delays in physically building infrastructure are still there.
Want to get access to Valorant? We’ve got all the details of how you can get the opportunity to test the game starting April 7. Be sure to also read our guides, so you can figure out which agent you’ll main before jumping into the action.
