VALORANT has become one of the most global first-person shooters of all time, from the recent dominance of Chinese teams in the VCT to hard-hitting rivalries between North and South America. Yet despite the game’s clear global presence, one entire continent has never had its own server—until now.
After three years of playing the game on incredibly high ping while creating countless Reddit threads and tweets to appeal to Riot, the VALORANT community in Africa is finally getting a server. VALORANT’s executive producer Anna Donlon announced today that Riot will finally be launching servers in South Africa and serve a part of the world that has never been able to experience the game with low ping.
VALORANT players in Africa have been asking for a local server since the very beginning of the game’s life cycle and, in the meantime, have had to connect to servers in Europe and the Middle East. The biggest issue is undoubtedly for players in the southern part of the continent because many countries in North Africa are able to connect to European servers with stable ping.
Players in South Africa, however, have had no option but to play with poor network latency.
“I’m from South Africa where our lowest ping to EU servers can be anywhere from 150ms to 200ms depending on where you are in the country,” one Reddit user said in a post last year. “We grind every day on these servers because we love the game but sometimes it’s just really tilting when the enemy just has more bullets than you.”
Many other players in the comments suggested the need for a server in Cape Town or Johannesburg. The new South African server will undoubtedly benefit many players, even if they don’t live in either of those two major cities.
The South African server will be facilitated by Carry1st, a company based in Cape Town.
Though players from West Africa and the central part of the continent may still struggle with high ping, an additional server in this part of the world is a step in the right direction, especially as VALORANT becomes an increasingly global title overall.
As far as esports goes, there is no African organization in the VALORANT Champions Tour, despite one of the regions being called EMEA (Europe, Middle East, and Africa). The region mostly has teams from Europe despite the effort at inclusivity. This South African server opens the door for accessibility for African players, though, and the possibilities are endless.
