The next step towards VALORANT's summer date release is here.
After being officially revealed earlier this month, Riot Games has announced a closed beta for its upcoming five-on-five tactical shooter which will begin on April 7. The beta will be limited to players in the United States, Canda, Turkey, Russia and Europe, with the possibility of more regions included later on, pending on the current coronavirus pandemic.
"Our plan was to bring the VALORANT Closed Beta to as many players around the world as quickly as possible, but the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted those plans, compromising a wider global rollout," Anna Donlon, Executive Producer of VALORANT at Riot Games said in a press release. "For now, we have to focus on the regions where we feel most ready, with more regions following in the months to come.
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We want to engage with players as globally as possible as quickly as possible, and so we'll ramp up our player count as much as we can to test our infrastructure, but we won't be letting everyone playtest VALORANT until we're absolutely sure we can handle it in this newly uncertain environment."
Riot, the creator of the current most-watched competitive video game title in the world, League of Legends, is partnering with the streaming titan Twitch to bring the beta to the viewers. When the closed beta activates in the eligible regions of North America and Europe, fans can watch specific VALORANT streams with a possibility of being granted access to the game before it launches officially later this summer.
"We're still aiming for our launch date of Summer 2020 (a little unspecific, we know), and want to keep closed beta as short as we can while getting additional regions online," Riot Games said in a press release. "That said, if we hear a lot of unexpected feedback from players during this period, we'll reevaluate."