VALORANT is Riot Games' free-to-play tactical shooter: five versus five, round-based, with one team planting a device called the Spike and the other preventing or defusing it.
The tactical core is deliberately close to Counter-Strike. Weapons are lethal in very few shots, movement accuracy is punished, death is permanent until the round ends, and each round begins with an economy phase where credits earned from the previous round buy weapons, shields and abilities.
What is layered on top is the Agent roster. Every player selects a character with a small set of purchasable abilities — smokes, flashes, walls, recon darts, area denial — and those abilities are tools for taking or holding a site rather than damage dealers in their own right. The result sits between a pure tactical shooter and a hero shooter, and team composition matters as much as individual aim.
Riot runs the game with an anti-cheat driver and a competitive ranking system, and supports it with a full esports circuit organised by region.
Free on Windows. Revenue is entirely cosmetic — weapon skins and accessories — and Agents are unlocked through play or with premium currency, never with competitive advantage attached.
Riot Games, the developer of League of Legends, builds and operates VALORANT, running its competitive circuit and seasonal content updates directly.
