If you have even a passing interest in PC games, you’ve probably heard of Valorant, Riot Games’ upcoming free-to-play shooter. Valorant Twitch viewers shot into the millions mere hours after the FPS game’s closed beta launch, and it looks like the enormous interest has led to some issues the studio’s had to contend with: it’s already banned “a pile” of account sellers.
In a post on the multiplayer game’s site uploaded the day after the closed beta release, the studio says: “We are actively looking into account sellers. If you buy an account for Valorant access, please be aware that your account could be banned before launch!” in its list of “reassurances” to players. Now, on Twitter, the League of Legends developer has confirmed it’s already taken the step of banishing a batch of players for this reason.
“We’ve banned a pile of Valorant closed beta account sellers and botters to free up more entitlements. Tracking more. Don’t buy accounts, you might lose them!” a tweet posted on the Valorant Twitter channel today reads.
Plug ‘Valorant’ into Ebay right now, and you’ll see there is already a pretty thriving market for accounts, with prices going up into the hundreds of US dollars.
We've banned a pile of VALORANT closed beta account sellers and botters to free up more entitlements. Tracking more. Don't buy accounts, you might lose them!
— VALORANT (@PlayVALORANT) April 9, 2020
With a system currently in place that gives a certain degree of “weight” to users who have watched a lot of Valorant streams in the allocation of closed beta access (which is random), it seems there’s a lot of “viewbotting” going on, too. Riot says: “We’re aware of all the viewbotting going on, and do want to reassure you that both us, and Twitch have filters in place to distinguish bots versus people.”
Take a look at our Valorant gameplay preview if you’re keen to get an idea of what the game will bring when it arrives sometime later this year.