Valorant devs open up about the janky patch stability

Image via Riot Games
Image via Riot Games

This is what the Valorant developers had to say about the questionable stability of their recent patch.

The November 5 edition of Ask Valorant has been released by Riot Games, and answers some widely asked questions, the first of which was about how badly the most recent patch went at launch.

On a quite regular basis, the Valorant developers take the time to answer some questions about the state of their first-person shooter. The questions are often on the minds of all players, and Riot Games has no issue being transparent with their answers.

Everyone knows that Valorant has been a huge success, but it has not gone without its hiccups. The most recent patch was a disaster, which called for its removal and redeployment.


Valorant: Devs open up about the janky patch stability

Question:

Patch stability has been really bad these days. What’s going on?

Answer:

Oof, yeah this one stings. Our day zero patch stability has honestly been far below our own expectations recently. There are many different reasons for this, from internal process improvements we have to make, to some philosophical changes we should consider, investment in tooling and infrastructure. Honestly, we could even include maybe slowing down a bit.
We’ve been rigorously keeping to the two week patch cadence since even before we started our Closed Beta. Even with the logistical challenges of working from home, the team has been—and continues being—incredibly passionate to get content and features out as quickly as possible, including moving up our maps release schedule. But it’s time to take a breath and take stock of what we need to do internally to make sure that our efforts are sustainable and hitting the quality bar you, our players, deserve.
Now that the biggest fires from the 1.11 deploy (and rollback and redeploy) are out, we’re going to take a few weeks to do a thorough investigation into our processes and tools as well as make sure we have a roadmap for improvements that allow us to continue shipping all the amazing stuff we have planned—sustainably and at a higher quality bar.
We want this to be as transparent as possible so you know what improvements to expect and what to hold us accountable for, so we’ll get back to you before we leave on holiday break with an overview and roadmap of what actions we’ll be taking.
Until then, thank you for your patience, understanding, and support.

The question was answered by Valorant Senior Producer Arnar Gylfason. It is obvious that Riot Games and the Valorant team know they have had a few screw ups. The refreshing thing is that they are aware of this, thereby claiming responsibility and focusing on fixing the issue.

The patch was riddled with stuttering issues, desync problems, and even on screen graphical bugs. The team had to roll the patch back in order to not disrupt competitive Valorant events. It truly was a mess, but thankfully, it seems that those working on Valorant are making it their top priority to avoid this with future patches.

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