Welcome current and aspiring VALORANT players, my name is Joe Lee and I’m the revenue lead for the game. Through the closed beta or elsewhere, you’ve probably already seen the work-in-progress VALORANT store and a small sample of the weapon skins and other cosmetic content available.

The Premium Content team and I hope you’ll be able to collect and customize your VALORANT experience into one that champions your playstyle, performance, or maybe just your taste in shiny weapons.

First and foremost: we care about making a great game. The collection of optional extras will never affect gameplay, so all you need to focus on is hitting your shots and going B, but then going A. Or going A, but going A.

Below, I’ll dive deeper into cosmetic content and how to get them. Here’s your quick summary:

• Unlock new Agents, weapon skins, player cards, and sprays by completing Agent Contracts
• Unlock weapon skins in the Store by using VALORANT Points
• “Evolve” certain weapon skins and go deeper on a theme by spending Radianite Points
• Earn items in the Battle Pass (available at launch) on the free and paid track

The Store

The Store rotates weapon and melee skins in two sections: Featured and Offers. The Featured section rotates every two weeks and the Offers section rotates every 2–3 days.

VALORANT Points, or VP for short, is the premium currency you can use to unlock content. VP can only be purchased using real currency within the VALORANT game client.

Weapon and melee skins 

VALORANT is an FPS, and you’re going to spend a lot of time looking at your weapons. It just made sense to make unique weapon skins the primary source of customization. You can obtain them in the store, through Contracts, and the Battle Pass.

Even with all the different customizations we have ready and planned, we made sure all content—weapon skins especially—are designed not to interfere with gameplay. While the characteristics of a weapon might change when customized by a skin (model, animation, visual effects, audio), these features are not intended to provide positive or negative advantage to a player. If we find any skin does cross this line, know it was accidental and that we will adjust.

Additionally, it’s important to note that other players will only see your skin’s model changes. Every other change, from new reload/equip animations, to visual effects and sounds, will only apply to your personal game experience with no impact on other players (i.e. a Vandal with a different skin will always sound like a Vandal to the enemy).

Radianite Points evolve your skins

VALORANT is introducing Radianite Points as a way to evolve certain weapon skins. The first level is unlocked when you get the skin. You can then use Radianite Points to unlock each additional level, featuring customizations like new visual effects, audio, animations, unique finishers, and variants.

The primary way to earn Radianite Points is via the battle pass, but you can acquire more in the store.

Contracts

All players will have two contract slots that you progress through at the same time. All XP earned through matches and missions will apply equally to both slots, so you never have to worry about prioritizing an Agent unlock versus battle pass rewards.

Slot 1 will be filled with either an onboarding pass or an Agent Contract. New players get an onboarding pass of 10 tiers. Completing the onboarding pass unlocks any two Agents of your choice. Once the onboarding pass is completed, you’ll be able to equip an Agent contract and start earning Agent-specific rewards.

Slot 2 will always be filled with our battle pass, or as we like to call it our Story Contract. You’ll always make progress on this contract and earn rewards along the way.

Agent Contracts

Each Agent comes with 10 tiers of Contracts that, when completed, reward you with all kinds of special items—but most important, a new Agent.

For the Agent contract, you can either grind or purchase your way to tier 5 (directly to the Agent). Beyond that, through tiers 6-10, you’ll have to earn purely through play. This is how you’ll prove you really are the world’s biggest Viper one-trick.

Battle Pass a.k.a. Story Contract (available at launch)

Available at launch, the VALORANT Battle Pass gives you a route to progress and unlock cosmetics by rewarding you for playing VALORANT. There will be a free track for all and a paid track as well. Same idea here folks, the optional extras are designed to personalize your gameplay moments without affecting gameplay.

Again, you won’t see the full battle pass during closed beta, it goes live when VALORANT launches. That’s all we got for now.