Valorant is your global competitive stage. It's a 5v5 tac-shooter matchup to plant or defuse the Spike in a one-life-per-round, first to 13 series. More than guns and bullets, you'll choose an Agent armed with adaptive, swift, and lethal abilities that create opportunities to let your gunplay shine. Creativity is your greatest weapon.

Plant the Spike

Agents and their signature abilities are how you win with skill and style. Adapt and outplay in the role of either a Duelist, Initiator, Controller, or Sentinel.

Detonate or Defuse

Haven. Bind. Split. Ascent. Each a stage for a multitude of savvy plays, agent clutches, and team strategies.

Recommended Specs:

  • Windows 7/8/10/11 64-Bit
  • 4 GB of RAM
  • CPU: Intel i3-4150
  • GPU: Nvidia GeForce GT 730

What's New:

Valorant 5.0 complete release notes here.

Map Updates

Pearl

  • New Map: Pearl goes live!
  • Pearl-only queue
  • This queue is a standard, Unrated mode that will give players a chance to practice the new map before they see it in Competitive play.
  • Pearl-only queue will be available for 2 weeks, then after that Pearl will enter Competitive.

Split

  • We are temporarily removing Split from the map pool in Unrated and Competitive queues
  • There are reasons! You can read more about our decision in our map pool update article.

Previous release notes

Along with the new VALORANT Act III Battlepass and Competitive refresh (there's also that new Agent arriving later), we put the Classic through some honing and rearranged some furniture on Fracture.

Weapon Updates

Classic (Right-Click)

The Classic has been over-performing in close to mid-range encounters when used while jumping or on the move. So we've reduced the weapon's effective accuracy while jumping, running, and walking, with the intent of narrowing it's ideal use case to only really close ranges.

  • Walking firing error changed .05 >>> .6 (total error is 2.5 when walking, up from 1.95)
  • Running firing error changed .2 >>> 1.3 (total error is 3.2 when running, up from 2.1)
  • Jumping firing error changed from 1.1 >>> 2.1 (total error is 4.0 when jumping, up from 3.0)

Map Updates

Fracture

  • The B Arcade attacker barrier is shifted back towards Attacker Side Bridge, to allow defenders to more easily contest the area
  • Defender barrier at A Rope moved up to the top of ropes to make it easier for Sentinels to prepare.
  • A Hall orb shifted into more neutral space, making it less favorable for attackers
  • New piece of cover in Attacker spawn added to break the long sightline from Hall entrance to B Main, which should relieve some pressure from attackers when defenders fast flank

Game Systems Updates

  • Smoother Ropes/Ziplines
  • Fixed jittery movement that could occur when stopping or changing directions on a zipline or rope. This was most noticeable when repeatedly moving a small amount and stopping.

Esports Features

  • Observers using gamepad controllers are no longer locked out of the X/Y axes when speeding up with the right bumper (R1).
  • Free Cam observers rejoice!
  • Observers now have the option to set handedness for teams
  • When this option is toggled, observers will see players that start the match on attacker as right-handed, and players that start the match on defender will be left-handed.

General

  • One path for all traffic into game servers
  • For those of you particular to a preferred server, you may notice a previously preferred location is no longer there. Don't worry, we simply consolidated what was two paths into the game servers into one---we did not remove any servers.

Bugs

Competitive

Fixed a bug that was causing the default Act Rank badge to display on Unrated game loading screens

Agents

  • Cypher can no longer place Spycam on the Breeze door in order to destroy or see through the door when it's lowered.
  • Similarly, fixed random spots where Cypher could not place Spycam in the same area.
  • Fixed bug that displayed Jett's 1P Updraft visuals incorrectly