Will Valorant ever get battle royale? Riot devs discuss future modes

Valorant developers from Riot Games have answered a series of questions about the future of the game and new modes that could be added down the line. For fans of battle royales, there’s some good news and bad news.

In an interview with Eurogamer, eight members of Riot’s Valorant developer team were asked questions about the various aspect of their prized FPS game. They ranged from inquires about a next-gen console port to the game’s visuals and any new content that could be coming up.

The big questions, however, came in regards to new modes that could be added in the future, the major one being a possible battle royale or a similar experience.

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“Could Valorant technically support, for example, tens or hundreds of players in a single match, or a game mode with a much larger map?” Eurogamer asked game tech lead David Straily.

While the question didn’t say battle royale by name, it basically fit the mode’s general description, and, as it turns out, Valorant currently wouldn’t be able to support it, at least not without some major drawbacks.

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“Not without some compromise on our 128-tick servers and client performance targets,” Straily replied.

While it may seem like this is a no-go, he did provide just a touch of hope: “If we ever were to do something at this scale, we would run a thorough investigation to find the best solve which maximizes player value. In the ideal, we would do something with dynamic tick rates, where you keep a high frame rate when it matters most in gameplay, and then scale it down in situations where competitive integrity is a less critical need.”

Are modded modes coming to Valorant?

Eurogamer also asked about players being able to mod Valorant and potentially create their own game modes through the use of a system similar to that of Overwatch’s Workshop.

“We’ve definitely considered it, but I think ultimately we find it difficult to focus our efforts on delivering a streamlined experience while also supporting and helping to curate community created content,” game director Joe Ziegler replied.

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“This may change in the future, but for the time being, given how much we are focused on bringing the gameplay forward, filling out our content, and pushing improvements to our out of game experiences, our developers already have a full plate.”

Riot has discussed Retake servers

Finally, they were asked about Retake servers and allowing teams to practice a critical part of a round, having to take back or defend a bombsite. According to Ziegler, it’s something they’ve thought of in the past and it’s “possible” they’ll be adding it in the future.

“We may introduce something similar to this concept as part of our efforts to add more practice modes or alternate modes in the future as we evolve the game,” he said.

Valorant may still be in its infancy, but it’s good to see that the game’s future could be filled with all sorts of new modes to keep players coming back for years.