You know how Riot Games made it very clear that Valorant esports was to undergo big changes for 2023, and then it revamped the Valorant Champions Tour and announced a series of VCT 2023 partnership teams? Well, there are more changes to look forward to – and these affect everyone trying to climb the Valorant ranks, not just the pro players. Riot Games has just announced a new competitive mode for Valorant called Premier. Not only does it go beyond the standard ranked mode and Radiant, but it also introduces a new way for every Valorant player to qualify for domestic leagues – if they’re good enough, of course.
Valorant Premier may sound like a money-grabbing subscription service for one of the best competitive FPS games available right now, but it’s actually a brand new way for hopeful Valorant players to make their way into the esports scene. Yeah, it might be worth sorting out your Valorant crosshair before that all kicks off.
Starting with something of an alpha test for this new tier of competitive Valorant, Riot Games is aiming to launch a refined and polished version of Premier – that’s larger in scale – in 2023.
The plan is to have this mode fully integrated into Valorant’s evolving esports scene, so this is going to be the best place to play if you’re looking to start your esports journey with this free shooting game.
As explained by competitive team designer Jon Walker in this Valorant blog post, Premier is going to “allow you to build a team and compete across a season of pre-scheduled matches”; each season is expected to last a few weeks and will end in an end-of-season tournament where players can fight for the title of Division Champion.
Sounds exciting, right? Well, starting next week, players in Brazil will be the first to check out this new mode in the Premier Alpha.
Throughout this alpha test, select players will be toying with team creation, stress-testing servers, and checking out competitive features such as a map pick-and-ban system and tournament play. Riot Games is also looking for feedback on the new Premier Score system – but, it hasn’t announced anything specific about this just yet.
Before people jump in, and things start appearing online, Walker wants to make it clear that “this is an alpha” and that “Premier is about 60% of all the planned features” in its current state. So, don’t worry if things look a little bare bones right now – there’s more to come before the mode’s full release in 2023.
Well, right now, that’s all we know about Valorant Premier and the new competitive mode coming to Riot Games’ FPS. If you’re looking to jump back into this shooter sooner rather than later, you should check out the latest Valorant patch notes here and read up on our latest Valorant agent tier list here. This game’s updates are always changing things, you know.