VALORANT arrives on June 2

Today’s Summer Game Fest answered one of the biggest questions fans have had about Riot’s upcoming shooter VALORANT. Its launch date. 

VALORANT executive producer Anna Donlon and game director Joe Ziegler joined Geoff Keighley on today’s stream to share a brief teaser of the game’s new map and a June 2 launch date. Although the official release window was Summer 2020, internally, the team at Riot had always had their eye on this date. However, due to the coronavirus pandemic, Riot decided to play things safe by keeping it to themselves until they were confident of meeting the deadline.

The plan had been to launch the game with 12 agents, but the twelfth just didn’t cut it. Fortunately, Ziegler assured fans that the eleventh agent would be quite different and “spicy.” As far as the new map goes, it looks like rumors of a Venice-like locale are true, judging by what was seen in the brief teaser shared early in the stream. It will however, launch with the game in beta as the map hasn’t gone through the motions of proper testing, especially since it hasn’t been available inthe closed beta.

Donlon and Ziegler went on to discuss the team’s trials working under the restrictive conditions imposed by the pandemic, fan feedback, and anti-cheat.