Valorant, Riot Games' competitive first-person shooter, is quickly becoming one of the most anticipated releases of the year. This weekend Riot allowed content creators to share footage of their hands-on time withValorant. The game quickly became the top game on Twitch, as viewers hoped for closed beta invitations to be given. Competitive gamers are anxious to get their hands onValorant, which may be a problem. That problem being thatValorant’s developers are apparently having a hard time stopping playing, too.
In a recently releasedRiot Gamesdeveloper diary,ValorantDesign Director Joe Ziegler described an issue the team ran into. OnceValorantbecame playable, too many developers were spending too much time playing the game. Ziegler describes having to have one of their “evil” senior producers impose a rule on playtime during work hours because development was noticeably slowing down.
RELATED:Valorant’s Next Agent Leaks
As exciting as it was for theValorantdevelopment team to be enthralled by their ownmultiplayer shooter, the goal was still to getValorantin the hands of players as soon as possible. The dev team’s leadership felt the rules were necessary to accomplish that.
Valorantis currently running its “Friend & Family” beta, with itsclosed beta starting April 7. The FF beta means developers are largely playing with other developers, so a lot of ideas can be explored by playing the game. Ideas on paper aren’t always the same as ideas become reality. So playtime during work can be highly valuable, just not in the quantity that Riot was perhaps seeing.
Riot’s employees may have more leeway to play games during work hours than many studios. They’re well-known to foster a culture where employees play lots of games. During former Overwatch pro Seagull’s recentValorantbroadcast, he talked briefly about how good many Riot employees are at the game. He specifically named severalLeague of Legendscastersas examples.
For the time being,Valorantremains on-schedule to launch this summer, though a firm release date hasn’t been confirmed as of yet. There’s always a chance for a delay, but odds are it wouldn’t be due to too much game playing during work hours. Rather, it’d be likely due to the COVID-19 pandemic and work-from-home policies. For now, though, Riot’s clearly focused on getting the job done.
Valorantreleases this summer on PC.
MORE:10 Online Shooters & FPS You Didn’t Know Were Coming In 2020
