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Riot Games announces Valorant, new free FPS game for PC

Updated on March 9, 2021

Valorant is the new FPS game from Riot Games. The developer of League of Legends (LoL) announced the shooter this Monday (2). The game will be released in the winter of 2020, with no set date, for free download on PC and promises to run even on most basic computers. Until then known as “Project A”, the game was announced on the 10th anniversary of the launch of LoL. Now, in addition to gaining an official name, Valorant had more details released.

Meet Valorant

Valorant is a tactical 5v5 fps that mixes elements of Counter Strike: Global Offensive (CS:GO) with Overwatch. The title features a cast of characters with specific skills and maps where the objective is to activate a bomb or defend a territory.

The teams start the match as an attack or defense, and switch sides in the twelfth round. The team that has 13 points wins first, and games have up to 24 rounds. The game has an economy similar to that of CS:GO and offers several weapons for purchase at the beginning of each round. The characters have specific abilities that can also be released in the store.

Skills for Valorant characters can be purchased at the beginning of each round. (Image: Riot Games)

Plot and characters

The game comes out of the LoL universe and into a futuristic reality on planet Earth. Valorant is an organization that brings together human beings with special powers, with diverse histories and from different countries, such as USA, United Kingdom, China, Morocco, Korea and Russia. The team works to defend the world from a greater existential threat. According to the developer, the operators' plots will be revealed gradually in updates, something similar to what is done in LoL.

Each of the operators has specific skills that will determine their role in the team: collecting information from enemies, strengthening locations on the map or controlling regions, for example. In the demo tested by TechTudo, the game had eight characters, four women and four men, and two maps. Riot reported that the released version, however, will have more scenarios and heroes.

Valorant maps were developed by Salvatore Garozzo, creator of Cache, from CS: GO. (Image: Riot Games)

Servers and anti-cheat tool

Riot Games has promised that the game will be released with several free servers around the world. The game's developers have revealed that Brazil will have an exclusive server that will be located in São Paulo, just like the LoL server.

The anti-fraud program will also be active from the first day of game activity. The system seeks to predict cheats and hacks that already exist in other games in the fps genre, such as wallhack, for example. The system will be similar to that of LoL and promises to monitor players in real time and, if a cheater is detected, the game will be interrupted and offenders will be punished.