Riot Are Planning Social Valorant Game Modes

Valorant cypher — Image credit: Riot Games

Valorant might soon get some new casual game modes as Riot Games are trying to reduce the stress of competitive grinding even further.

Riot’s new tactical shooter, Valorant, has been officially out for over 4 months now and the number of game modes hasn’t increased that much since then. The same thing can also be said about the maps as there are only four of them – Haven, Bind, Split, and Ascent. For now, we’ll be focusing on the game modes.

Valorant spike rush decay orb — A decay orb specific to the Spike Rush mode. (Image credit: Riot Games)

Currently, there are only three of them available. First and foremost you have the classic one that includes a bomb defusal scenario, found in both competitive and casual. Further down the line we find Spike Rush, a mode that’s meant to be fast-paced with special modifiers and effects that you won’t find in a normal match. Last but not least, after a lot of requests from the community Riot also added Deathmatch as a playable mode. It’s just that a 10vs10 deathmatch that’s perfect for warming up before some competitive. It also differs from the normal one as you won’t find any agent abilities in there, just pure gunplay.

READ MORE: New Valorant Ego Skins by OneTap

So what other modes can Riot possibly add? Looking at fellow competitor CS:GO there are definitely some options. Valve’s tactical shooter offers bomb defusal, hostage rescue, deathmatch, wingman (2v2) and many war games that rotate. The current war games feature fun modes like Arms Race & Demolition and The Flying Scoutsman. Additionally, there are a ton of community-made maps that vary from bunny hopping to aim training. At first glance it might be hard for Riot to compete with all of that but they might not have to.

Riot is Planning Social Game Modes

In a recent interview with USgamer, Valorant Game Director Joe Ziegler shared:

What we are looking at right now is like, how do we flesh out that ecosystem even further in the future. Areas where groups can warm up together, hang out, or have some "social downtime" are all on the Valorant team's mind for further mode development.Those are the spaces that I think we're going to continue see growing around Valorant is, more tools to help you compete, but also more tools to actually help you just a live a more full life inside of Valorant, as opposed to very stressful competitive games back-to-back.

Stress and burnout are not something that happens exclusively to pro players in the competitive scene. Anyone who spends way too much time grinding that next rank might suffer some negative consequences. It seems Riot is quite aware of that and the company will be aiming to make Valorant much easier on the players. Social game modes might just be the way to go as they’ll be meant to have fun. Just look at the success of games like Fall Guys or Among Us. Cooperative casual action seems to be the next big thing and if Valorant can get on that train it’s going to be a win-win for everyone.