VALORANT

Valorant 

Valorant (stylized as VALORANT) is a free to play tactical first person shooting game developed and published by Roit Games, for Windows. Teased under the codename Project A in October 2019, the game began a closed beta period with limited access on April 7, 2020, followed by a release on June 2, 2020. The development of the game started in 2014. Valorant takes inspiration from the Counter strike series of tactical shooter, borrowing several mechanics such as the buy menu, spray patterns, and inaccuracy while moving. 

Gameplay

Valorant is a team-based first person tactical hero shooter game set in the near future. Players play as one of a set of Agents, characters based on several countries and cultures around the world. In the main game mode, players are assigned to either the attacking or defending team with each team having five players on it. Agents have unique abilities, each requiring charges, as well as a unique ultimate ability that requires charging through kills, deaths, orbs, or objectives. Every player starts each round with a "classic" pistol and one or more "signature ability" charges. Other weapons and ability charges can be purchased using an in-game economic system that awards money based on the outcome of the previous round, any kills the player is responsible for, and any objectives completed. The game has an assortment of weapons including secondary guns like sidearms and primary guns like submachine guns, shotguns, machine guns, assault rifles and sniper rifle. There are automatic and semi automatic weapons that each have a unique shooting pattern that has to be controlled by the player to be able to shoot accurately. It currently offers 20 agents to choose from. They are Brimstone, Viper, Omen, Cypher, Sova, Sage, Phoenix, Jett, Raze, Breach, Reyna, Killjoy, Skye, Yoru, Astra, KAY/O, Chamber, Neon, Fade, Harbor, and Gekko. The player will get 5 unlocked agents when they create their account, (Brimstone, Sova, Sage, Phoenix and Jett) and will have to unlock the rest of the agents by activating that agent's contract, which enables the player to unlock the agent after earning a certain amount of XP by playing games.

ESPORTS

Valorant has become active within esports. Riot Games decided to create the first tournament called "First Strike" to establish a foundation for an esports scene to be created with the game. In November 2020, Riot Games announced the tournament series called Valorant Champions Tour (VCT) which is a year-long competition consisting of three levels:

• Valorant Challengers - regional competitions which are qualifiers for Masters
• Valorant Masters - international competitions in mid-season, divided into many stages
• Valorant Championship the world championship of the year

Teams will qualify directly for Champions via top places in Circuit Point Standings of their region, based on results of Challengers and Masters. Teams who are at middle places in Circuit Point Standings will have one more chance to qualify for Champions by winning the Last Chance Qualifiers (North America, EMEA, South America, Asia Pacific).

The 2021 Valorant Championship was hosted in 1–12 December at Berlin. Acend defeated Gambit Esports on the score 3–2 in finals and became the first ever world champion of Valorant esports.

The 2022 Valorant Championship was hosted from August 31-September 18 at Istanbul. LOUD defeated Optic Gaming on the score 3–1 in finals and became the 2nd world champion of Valorant esports.