Riot Games on Valorant's competition, toxicity, and why 2020 isn't too late for a team-based shooter

4 years 2 months ago

Project A, one of several games announced in a wave of 10th anniversary fanfare at the end of 2019, is now officially called Valorant. It's free-to-play, it's releasing in Summer 2020, and as you might have read in our lengthy Valorant preview, it looks pretty slick.

That said, our hands-on time with the game threw up plenty of questions, too. The most obvious one: why a tactical shooter? And why now, so long after Overwatch, Rainbow Six and Counter Strike seemingly cornered the market?

Then there's Riot's unusual opening gambit, opting to lead with such a huge blast of technical info, and promises about stability and anti-cheating, over introducing us to the world of this game itself. What will the in-game purchases look like? And, after a decade of League of Legends, what has Riot learned about curbing its huge problem with toxicity?

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