The 5th anniversary of VALORANT is just around the corner. Since its announcement, we have seen the community revive many nostalgic moments. Many of these come from moments during the past seasons of the VALORANT Champions Tour (VCT). In its video titled Dev Updates, Riot Games has made some announcements about the upcoming seasons of VALORANT esports. Let’s check them out.
VALORANT Announces Multiple Upcoming Changes In VALORANT Esports
Credit: Riot Games
In the video about the VALORANT 5-year anniversary dev diary, employees within the esports team of Riot Games shared some updates concerning the upcoming years. The first detail shared was that Pick’Ems were coming back for VALORANT Masters Toronto.
Within the VALORANT esports client, fans can now choose their Pick’Ems for the Swiss Stage of the tournament. Based on the predictions, players will receive points. Players will also be able to find out their ranking compared to other players in the world.
The second piece of information was that the first cycle of VCT Leagues will end in 2027. This means that the first cycle of team partnerships in VALORANT esports will end. This will give opportunities to other esports organizations to try their hand at getting into the VCT.
The head of VALORANT Esports, Leo Faria, stated that they want to accomplish various goals concerning VCT in the Future. The first being openness. While giving the partnership league priority, this means opening up to other tournaments, such as the Esports World Cup and the Asian Champions League, which were recently hosted during the season.
The second goal is to provide more flexibility in event structures within VALORANT. This could involve adding new types of competitions and formats. This allows for more community-based tournaments and regional events in VALORANT Esports.
Possible solutions for Riot Games
Source: Valorant Esports
The final goal of Riot Games is to add more regional events during the VALORANT esports cycle. Instead of most of the regional events taking place in the off-season, Riot Games wishes to host them during the season. The major problem at hand, though, is the current state of the tier 2 leagues.
With it being the third year of the VCT Partnership League, the community has raised some concerns about the esports ecosystem of the game. A significant portion of these issues concerns the current state of the Tier 2 leagues. Within VALORANT, there are Tier 1 and Tier 2 leagues. Tier 1 is the 4 VCT regional Leagues: EMEA, Pacific, Americas, and China.
Tier 2 consists of regional tournaments called VALORANT Challengers. Usually, each country within a given region has its own VALORANT Challengers tournament. Currently, many Challenger leagues are being shut down, resulting in multiple countries being combined into one league. We have recently seen this take place with VALORANT Challengers SEA.
If Riot Games wishes to do more regional events, they already have a solution for this. Surprisingly, it has been implemented within one of their VCT Regions, China. Within VCT CN, tournaments are held between two significant events, featuring teams from both Tier 1 and Tier 2. In China, this tournament is called the Valorant China Evolution Series. Within these events, teams from both VCT CN and the Challenger leagues face off against each other.
As these tournaments are held in a venue, they provide more exposure to the teams in Tier 2 of VALORANT esports. In 2027, we can expect to see more such events in China and other regions of the VALORANT Champions Tour.