It’s no secret that Riot Games knows how to run an esports tournament. From the majesty of League of Legends Worlds to the grit of the Valorant Champions Tour, Riot esports is the gold standard. But, while you can buy LoL skins and cosmetics that celebrate your favorite teams, you haven’t been able to in its sister shooter – until now. The latest round of Valorant patch notes for the 8.03 update are the ones we’ve been waiting for.
Before I was news editor at PCGamesN, I was an esports writer with a focus on, you guessed it, Valorant. I’ve watched as First Strike blossomed into the Valorant Champions Tour (VCT); I’ve cried when Fnatic fell at the final hurdle oh so many times, and cried again when they eventually vaulted it. While graphic design is your passion, mine is VCT.
But, up until now, we haven’t been able to buy esports skins in the FPS game, despite Riot’s flagship MOBA, League of Legends, having numerous cosmetics that celebrate the best teams in the world (iG Rakan for the win). The one thing I’ve been crossing my fingers for in Valorant is VCT team skins – and, with patch 8.03, they’re finally here.
As discussed in the patch notes, there’s now a dedicated esports tab in the store, with numerous pages for each individual team. You can pick up a VCT Team Capsule for your favorite, with 50% of the proceeds going to your chosen team.
Each capsule contains a skin for your Classic, as well as a gun buddy, player card, and spray. We don’t have a price for them at the moment, but let’s be real, I’ll be buying all of the EMEA ones anyway.
Chamber also gets a slight buff in this patch, with his infamous Headhunter (Q) now only costing 100 credits as opposed to 150. The rate of fire on his ultimate, Tour De Force (X), has also been increased from 0.7 to 0.9, with the aim of providing “more access to the Headhunter as a save or sidearm without draining your econ, and to increase the clear strength of Chamber’s ultimate compared to the Operator.”
Breach has some new interactions with Gekko, Harbor, and Deadlock, too, and there are a whole slew of bug fixes which you can read about here.
So if you, like me, plan to jump into Valorant this evening to pick up the Fnatic capsule, we have a rundown of the best Valorant crosshairs for you to use – after all, you want to play like Jake ‘Boaster’ Howlett, right? Or, if you’re content with looking slick, we have a list of all of the current Valorant skins, from Glitchpop to Singularity.
You can also follow us on Google News for daily PC games news, reviews, and guides, or grab our PCGN deals tracker to net yourself some bargains.