Valorant Cross-Region Play Not Happening, May Come Later

Valorant cross-region play won't be happening, according to a Riot dev, but it might still come at some point later in the game's life.

Riot Games has said that there won’t be Valorant cross-region play support when the game first releases. It is, however, possible that it might come later. For now, players will be region-locked as to where they can play, though that’s not necessarily a bad thing in light of other games.

Cross-region play not being supported means that each region that the game is released in will be isolated, meaning that players in North America can’t play with people in Europe or Asia. This has a risk of cutting down the game’s audience.

However, at the same time, it’s likely done in at least some sort of effort to curtail cheating. As Valorant is a very fast-paced Overwatch-like shooter where kills can be made in a single burst of bullets, wanting to keep areas more prone to cheating separated from one another is a big concern.

While Valorant cross-region play would allow every player in the game to play with people across the world, it would also allow cheaters in each region to wreak havoc. Even without cheating, the high pint of players from different regions playing together could slow the game down.

It’s not without precedent, either. When PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds was finally allowed to be released in China, the amount of Chinese players coming into the game and cheating their way to victory caused the game to hemorrhage players, with many demanding that developer Bluehole lock Chinese servers.

Considering that Blizzard’s own hero-based first-person shooter Overwatch also has its own problem with hackers and cheaters (though those are often quickly addressed by Blizzard), if this is the reason behind Valorant cross-region play not being supported.

It’s possible that Riot may end up allowing Valorant cross-region play at a later date once they have things more figured out, but until then hopefully the game can find an audience even with all of the different players region-locked. The game will be releasing sometime this year exclusively on the PC. PS4 and mobile versions may come later.

Hunter is senior news writer at SegmentNext.com. He is a long time fan of strategy, RPG, and tabletop games. When he is not playing games, he likes to write about them.