Launch Times For Ranked Play In ‘Valorant’ Announced

After initially being expected to launch alongside patch 1.02 yesterday, and then being pushed back due to a game breaking bug, Riot Games has now announced when ranked play in Valorant will actually be going live. 

For North America, Brazil and LATAM it will go live at 2pm PT, which is just a few hours from now. In Europe, Russia, Turkey and CIS it will go live at 8pm PT and for Korea, Oceania and APAC it will be live at 1pm PT. 

The timings for the launch of ranked around the world have been staggered so Riot Games can monitor the roll out and make sure everything is stable and working as intended. It has also been scheduled for off peak times in each region so that the downtime disturbs as few players as possible. 

Joe Ziegler, Game Director of Valorant at Riot Games, confirmed on Twitter that the critical issues that caused ranked play in Valorant to be delayed, such as the bug where a player was spawned in the opposing team’s spawn point or the one that allowed players to use no clip in live matches, have now been fixed, and as a result they are confident that ranked will now be a stable experience for everyone. 

The launch of ranked play will be welcome news to the many players who have been patiently waiting for the system to come online. Many expected to be able to play ranked matches by now, and these further delays have been very disheartening. 

When ranked does go live it will be a slightly different experience to what was available in the beta. Most notably the top rank has been renamed from Valorant to Radiant, which is significantly less confusing than achieving Valorant rank in Valorant. 

There will also be more flexibility when it comes to queuing with friends during your placement matches, with only the very largest of skill differences being banned. And generally speaking you should now experience closer matches when playing in a party, with Riot touring a much more balanced ecosystem for those playing with friends. 

Hopefully ranked play will bring with it more even games for everyone, with unranked matches currently being plagued by one or two players who are clearly more skilled dominating seemingly every match. Many players also do not take unranked seriously and have no problem trolling or otherwise running the game for those wanting to play seriously. With a bit of luck when you play in ranked matches you should find players who want to play a serious match and are of a similar skill level.