Today’s VALORANT 7.01 update isn’t the most impactful in terms of meta-altering or agent updates. In fact, there were no updates to any agent abilities at all apart from updated icons and a couple of added voicelines. But the rather insignificant update still managed to include one incredibly small but incredibly annoying change.
The tiny but troublesome change has swapped the position of the unrated and competitive game mode buttons. The reason this is so impactful is that VALORANT players have been so conditioned to the unrated button being on the left and the competitive button on the right that they are already queuing for the wrong mode just hours after the new patch went live.
Related: VALORANT 7.01 patch notes: Premier Ignition Stage
Some players have already said they’ve queued for unrated when they meant to play competitive, and vice versa. One player queued for unrated on accident and assumed that their game was bugged because their rank was not displaying. Other players have queued for competitive on accident, picking agents they don’t usually play competitively and getting flamed by teammates for not trying hard enough. “Just lost my rankup [because] I thought it was unrated,” one user on Reddit wrote.
Interestingly, there’s no mention of this change listed anywhere in the 7.01 patch notes; it’s a background change that Riot opted to make, but one that’s going to frustrate a lot of players for an undetermined amount of time. This frustration is compounded by the VALORANT client not remembering the last game mode a player used; one player noted this is also the case with inventory settings and custom server settings.
Related: All VALORANT agent pick rates in ranked
Over the first few days of the new patch, instances of players playing either competitive or unrated when they meant to queue for the other are going to continue to be high. So make sure you’re double-checking before hitting play.
