If you haven’t been living under a rock for the past month, you may have heard of the new first-person shooter, Valorant. Valorant is the new title game created by Riot Games, creators of popular MOBA, League of Legends. This game can be best compared to CS:GO, with its similar 5v5 competitive aspect. Along with this, they have also implemented different characters with ultimates and skills similar to Overwatch and League of Legends, which encourages players to explore different play-styles that could lead to change the tide of a match. This came as a surprise to many at first, since some believe this to be just a huge rip off from these popular shooters. However, many players and content creators believe this game could have huge potential in the future. Although this idea might not be entirely original, the good communication between the developers and players seem to have a bright future for the game.

The Valorant beta was released on April 7th, but the only way to access the game is actually by obtaining a key. To obtain the key, you are required a Twitch.tv account and need to watch at least 2+ hours of a Valorant live stream who have beta key drops enabled. The key is extremely hard to get since the only way to get this key is by luck. At first, this may seem like a bold marketing move by Riot Games, but Twitch and Riot Games benefit greatly from this strategy. Viewer counts for streamers hit all-time highs and publicity for Valorant sky-rocketed. The game is being heavily anticipated right now, and despite the game being free-to-play in the future, players are even selling keys for players who have not been fortunate to receive this drop yet.

One thing that has made Valorant a heavily controversial game is their actions taken against hackers. Upon installing the game, you are greeted with Riot’s anti-cheat system. However, what many players don’t know is the rootkit system that is being implemented into your computer. Although this rootkit system is the best action against hackers, it still gives the game complete access to your computer files. This includes bank information, school work, or anything that you keep on your computer. So far hackers have been pretty hard to find, but the anti-cheat still isn’t perfect, since hackers have been spotted in games within the past couple of weeks.

Valorant will remain on PC and there have been no plans of there being developments on other consoles. Riot has confirmed beta will continue all the way throughout summer, so if you plan to get a key it is best to start as soon as possible!