Riot reveals details of Valorant competitive mode

Developers at Riot Games revealed more details regarding the upcoming competitive mode for Valorant. In a blog post on the Valorant site on Friday, a member of Riot's competitive team announced the popular game's first go at a competitive mode will be released soon after its patch 0.49 goes out, and the first regions to get the competitive format will be Europe and North America.

A ranking system similar to those used in Riot games will be utilized, with eight levels: Iron, Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum, Diamond, Immortal, and Valorant, the game's highest rank. All but Valorant will have three tiers within each rank. Players will have to first complete 20 unrated matches to unlock the competitive mode, and games will allow up to five players. All players in the same game must be within two ranks of one another.

The competitive mode will first be launched in a closed beta, and at times during the beta developers will close the competitive matchmaking feature "as we work to refine the model and incorporate your feedback." The blog post also stated that some of the features in the competitive mode will be designed to ensure fairness in gameplay and mitigate maneuvers such as smurfing a practice in which highly skilled players create bogus profiles to play lesser competition.

There is no announced date for the patch 0.49 release.