Valorant Mobile Announced By Riot Games: Everything We Know so Far

Riot Games has reportedly announced Valorant Mobile while celebrating the game’s one-year anniversary. The developers have confirmed their plans of expanding their flagship Windows PC tactical shooter to other platforms, starting with mobile devices. Valorant has had a successful first year with reportedly 14 million players logging in every month, even their first LAN tournament ‘VCT Masters Reykjavík’ was a huge success with a peak viewership of over a million concurrent viewers. Now, on June 2, exactly a year since its official launch Valorant Mobile has been announced, all the rumours and speculations some of which going as far back as September 2020 are coming true.

RELATED:  Valorant Mobile is Reportedly in Development for Android and iOS Devices

Valorant Mobile Announced on First Anniversary

As a part of its first-year celebration, Riot Games has reportedly announced Valorant Mobile as the developers look to expand the game to other platforms. The decision comes after the Windows PC exclusive title skyrocketed within the first year of its release, on both fronts, casual (general userbase) and competitive (esports).

As per a statement given by Anna Donlon, Valorant’s Executive Producer to Dexerto, 

“One of our top goals this first year was to earn the trust and respect of the global FPS community and to prove to them that Valorant will always uphold the fundamentals of a truly worthwhile competitive tac-shooter.

To see our growing player community recognize and appreciate what we’re trying to do with Valorant is beyond what we could’ve expected and we’re thrilled to soon offer the same competitive Valorant experience to even more global players.”

Having said this, Riot Games confirmed Valorant for Mobile devices but most of the key information has still not been revealed including a release date. However, we do know that this mobile version is not going to be a spin-off or a different type of game, as stated by Donlon herself.

Valorant Mobile: Everything we Know so Far

Riot Games has shown a lot of interest in mobile platforms recently with Teamfight Tactics and Legends of Runeterra being quite popular on Android and iOS. League of Legends had its own mobile version released last year as Wild Rift, and the only game that is left to make the jump is is Valorant.

With the developers having announced Valorant Mobile, this last remaining game is also not too far from being officially released on the mobile market. While not a lot of information might have been revealed by Riot themselves, this is what we know so far.

The biggest clue about a mobile version of Valorant was found in September last year when a data miner was able to find code related to mobile settings from the game’s files itself. This also included mobile-specific controls as the developers were specifically testing touch-related controls.

Another huge clue that had surfaced was related to an accidental bug that a random Valorant user had faced while playing the game. In his case, a proper mobile themed user interface popped up above the normal Windows PC Valorant upon him loading the game. The firing touch control even responded by lighting up every time the user fired using his mouse.

A recent report by IGN India had stated that, Valorant Mobile was in the works and that Riot Games was trying to gauge which markets the mobile FPS title would work in. With the announcement now officially being made, it seems that this might have been true after all.

Unfortunately, critical information like Valorant Mobile’s release date, whether it will be available for both Android and iOS still remained hidden and unanswered.

RELATED:  Valorant Mobile: Release Date, News, Rumors

Valorant is Also in The Works for Console 

While Valorant for mobile devices has been announced, a console version of the game is supposedly in the works as well. Riot has earlier spoken about porting Valorant in the past and had mentioned that they will release the game on other platforms only if they can make the precise aiming feel good on other input methods. 

In September 2020, Riot confirmed that they are still working on the console version of the game. Felipe Romero revealed in an interview with Eurogamer that in order to transfer the experience to other platforms without losing the essence of Valorant, all of these factors would need to be taken into account.

Well, with Valorant Mobile now announced it seems that most of the factors have resulted in a positive outcome. Going forward, the success of the game on the mobile platform and how well it was received could be crucial for the further development of a console version.