Cover-Credits:
Teams have already landed in Berlin, Germany for the Valorant Champions main event which is set to kick off next week but not everyone seems to be happy with the practice environment set up by Riot Games. Sentinels IGL Shahzeb "ShahZaM" Khan is unhappy with the performance that the practice PC's offer as he is unable to get enough frame rates to play and stream at the same time.
Should Riot Games keep streamers’ needs in mind?
Valorant is a game that is not very graphically intensive and if you turn down the settings you could run it on basically any PC with a reasonable framerate. Performance expectations from pro players are going to be higher than the average player base, and ShahZam does not seem to think that the PCs at Berlin are up to the mark.
(ShahZam Clip - He complains and admits some other players had no issues streaming in the same clip) https://clips.twitch.tv/KitschySarcasticSnailCmonBruh-XUjRD9XJkrMW3px5
He complained about the PC's that have been provided by Riot Games not being up to the mark even for a less intensive game like Valorant. He had difficulties streaming the game as it caused dropped frames. It led to discussions on forums on Reddit and other social platforms with some fans being upset over Riot Games not being able to provide powerful enough PC's.
Opinion: Riot does not need to cater to streaming and content creation needs during competitive events
According to Cloud9 player Anthony "vanity" Malaspina, the PC's come equipped with Intel Core i9-9900K and a Geforce RTX 2080. Vanity thinks that the CPU is lacking and is not optimized for Valorant. But after the specs were revealed, fans in forums pointed out that the system should be more than fine for playing but if players start streaming on them, it should not be Riot Games’ responsibility.
(C9 Vanity Clip) https://clips.twitch.tv/DifferentPlayfulWoodpeckerCoolStoryBob-64e-o2VXXlUPDWsw
The PCs were built with scrims and online play in mind and not for content creation. It can be difficult to put the blame on Riot Games for not considering the fact that competing players might want to stream the game. After all, ShahZam admitted in the clip, where he complained about the PCs, that other pro players were able to stream the game just fine but he ran into issues.
Content creators take advantage of different types of stream setups and some creators even have dedicated streaming PCs that are separate from their gaming rigs. Riot Games’ responsibility is to offer an environment where players can practice without any technical issues and adding content creation to the mix may be asking for too much.
