Hello aspiring VALORANT players,

First, thank all of you for your interest and passion. Demand for access to the VALORANT closed beta has inspired us, humbled us, and overwhelmed us (a little). We learned a lot from yesterday, and would like to let you know what’s going on with Closed Beta entitlement drops, what we’re seeing, and to reassure you that you don’t need to watch 48 hours straight of streams.

We’ll be straightforward with you as we’ve always been: we need to make sure we’re not overloading our servers. If yesterday was an indication, we need to make sure we ramp slowly as hundreds of thousands—we hope!—of players start piling in at the same time. We still think we’re ready to lean in and solve these problems, but we’re not going to lie to you in saying we don’t have problems to solve.

We’ll start with some realities:

We want to support a stable, competitive, high-fidelity gameplay experience above all , even if that means limiting the number of people we can support for now. We can’t and won’t undermine gameplay quality for the sake of getting everyone in.

, even if that means limiting the number of people we can support for now. We can’t and won’t undermine gameplay quality for the sake of getting everyone in. This means we’ll continue to be careful about how many players we let into Closed Beta over the course of the next few days and weeks—it’s a lot of players, but honestly not nearly as much as the current demand we’re seeing. This might die off—we’re a new game!—but we’re not going to ignore it.

To repeat: we are aware of this demand and doing what we can to meet it in this current climate. Check back in next week with us, and we’ll let you know how that’s going.

Now let’s clarify a few things as we set ourselves up to meet this demand. First, here’s how Closed Beta entitlements work at a high level. They work differently than Twitch’s regular drop program because we’re tracking and entitling for access on our databases (so we can apply another layer of scrutiny).

You need to link your Riot account with your Twitch account and start watching VALORANT Twitch streams with drops enabled (we hope you’ve all done this already!).

Once you’ve passed a certain threshold of a couple hours watched on those streams (it’s roughly 2 and we are tracking by total VALORANT stream view time ), you’re eligible for a Closed Beta entitlement drop.

), you’re eligible for a Closed Beta entitlement drop. That said, everyone else who has watched at least a few hours of streams is also eligible, and we have limited slots on our servers. Yesterday at a rough count we saw peak viewers at 1.7m+ on Twitch, but there were definitely more who came in and out during the day. All of you are eligible for a drop—a few of you may even have woken up to one in your inbox!

viewers at 1.7m+ on Twitch, but there were definitely more who came in and out during the day. All of you are eligible for a drop—a few of you may even have woken up to one in your inbox! Speaking of which, aside from server outages (when we pause new entitlements), throughout the day and night, we are constantly taking everyone who’s eligible for a drop and we give a percentage of them Closed Beta access.

The selection is random to give fairness, but we give a higher ‘weight’ to those of you who have more hours watched of VALORANT streams. This weight gives you a higher chance at being selected but it’s still not guaranteed.

Hours watched also has diminishing returns, so please don’t burn yourself out trying to marathon VALORANT streams.

Now some reassurances:

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!

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 vs. people.

You can’t get keys from player support!

We’re also aware of a few of you getting “double drops” via Twitch. That’s a UI error but is not taking away anyone else’s entitlement.

You do not need to be on Twitch the very moment you get a drop. Take a break! With every wave of entitlements we do, you’re eligible and will be notified if you made it, even after you’ve turned off your streams.

need to be on Twitch the very moment you get a drop. Take a break! With every wave of entitlements we do, you’re eligible and will be notified if you made it, even after you’ve turned off your streams. You don’t need to have multiple streams open to increase your chances, and you don’t need to be AFK through the night on streams.

For those of you who have been marathoning VALORANT streams In the hopes of getting a drop … we see you. There’s a shockingly large amount of you, but we should have known this. We can’t guarantee anything but we hope we can reward you for your dedication. Please take a break, we’ll try to get you.

And that’s the very long-winded update from us. This is all so very, very exciting, but also scary. A little scary. We’ll get there. Please just give us a little time. Thanks!

- Joe and Anna