The first-person shooter genre offers less room for innovation compared to others, so everyone pays attention to the times of new releases. When VALORANT came out, Riot Games impressed even the most seasoned fps veterans with innovative mechanics, kickstarting its consistent growth.
Growing up where I’m from meant you were either an FPS, MMORPG, or MOBA player. Each of these genres had one game everyone played, and Counter-Strike has been that title on the FPS front since 2000. My FPS friends only moved to new CS games as they released, but that pattern broke for the first time when VALORANT arrived.
When did VALORANT release?
VALORANT came out on June 2, 2020. Before the game’s full version rolled out, most fans got to play VALORANT starting from April 7, 2020, in limited access tests.
Since the game’s 2020 release, the number of players VALORANT has continued to grow at a fairly steady rate. By 2023, VALORANT had doubled its monthly player base compared to 2021. At the time of writing, VALORANT has over 18 million players and more than four million of them play the game daily, according to tracker.gg.
After VALORANT completed its limited access run and Riot eventually released the full version, the doors of content opened. VALORANT seasons started in earnest, and they were bundled with the occasional agent releases too. Over time, the game’s metagame has shaped into something more stable, with clear best and worst VALORANT agents for each map. Riot releases balance changes with each patch, causing the meta to constantly change.
If you’d like a more fundamental approach, check out our recommended ways to win more in VALORANT, helping you to rank up more and climb that ladder.
