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16/12/20Dev

End of Year: Characters Team

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Howdy VALORANT friends,

When a team releases anything they never truly know how players will embrace it; we all have hopes, but things never go as planned. Part of the joy in making Agents for VALORANT is that their identities will shift as y'all play them. The team can debate all day long what will happen when an Agent goes live, but within an hour, y'all play more games than we do in years of development. 

With all of that said, we cannot be more overjoyed with how you have helped to shape the VALORANT Agents so far. Your thoughts, your art, your videos—they’ve refined what the roster is in 2020, and will continue to affect what it will be in the future.

Going into Open Beta was a massive moment for the Character team. Our internal musings about the Agents didn't matter anymore, only how you played them. And you did more than that:

  • Y'all streamed relentlessly (Some of us tried watching nine at the same time, trust me your brain can not handle it ;_; ).
  • Some of you broke the game over and over, we fixed bugs as you were streaming the issues (Thanks for the nerd cam locations Hiko!)
  • You made endless amounts of fan art. (There are VALOR"ANTS" AND VALOR"CATS")
  • Volumes of feedback were posted ... and we read as much as our eyes could take.

We did everything we could to get this roster ready for launch and then—in what felt like a blink of an eye—VALORANT was live to the world. We felt even more urgency to respond to everything! Like 95% playrate Sage who was immune to nerfs, all the frag montages, Reyna, Killjoy, and now Skye released! There is always something new for us to tackle, and everyone on the team gave it their all to make this the best roster we could.

Again, we value the feedback, the fan art, the lore theories, and most of all, your time playing. When a development team works on a roster like this, it's easy to get attached to the characters. There are good/bad memories with each and they start to feel like extensions of yourself. At the end of the day though, they are made for all of you.. With VALORANT out the door all of those feelings are shoved to the side, these Agents are extensions of you, and we’re stoked to see how they evolve because of you.

Thank you for 2020, looking forward to 2021!

—John Goscicki, on behalf of the Characters team

We arewaiting

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