Valorant: Riot Games addresses the possibility of a “Left Hand View" mode in future patches

Valorant fans have been asking for a left-hand view mode for a very long time. Not all players like to play with the gun on the right, and other tactical, low-ttk shooters like CS: GO, do address this issue.

Now, Riot Games did talk in-depth about how they are working on left-hand support for Valorant. However, that was all the way back during the first week of July.

Weeks and months have passed since any new updates on the matter, but in their latest Ask Valorant #8, Riot did take up the issue once again and talked about some of the problems that they need to deal with before they patch out a left-hand support to the live servers.

Valorant will be getting a left-hand view mode in future patches

In the Ask Valorant #8 blog, the Senior Producer at Riot Games, Steven Eldredge, addressed the question which read, “Are there any updates regarding a “Left Hand View model”?

He replied:

We know that this is something that a lot of players have been asking for and we've been doing some exploration into this. We're currently in the process of validating how this would work from not just a technical side but from a competitive and artistic front as well. While this may seem like a small technical challenge, we want to make sure this is done right for players. To do this we need to validate a couple of different things.

By ‘competitive and artistic front,’ Eldredge means that a left-handed view should not ruin the competitive integrity of the game, while at the same time the weapon cosmetics, as well as the right-handed mode, does.

When talking about the weapon cosmetic support, he says:

The first thing we want to consider is how we maintain the art fidelity of our awesome weapon skins, character models, and abilities. We don't frequently get to see different camera views of our first-person weapons and view arms so we'll need to make sure our art still holds up when we switch hands for players. We'll need to make sure that abilities still originate from the same place and that our hot fire still looks like... well... hot fire.

“The second aspect we need to consider is how this might impact the competitive integrity of the game.” Eldredge continues when talking about the competitive integrity of Valorant, “We want to ensure that there are no advantages or disadvantages to playing with a left-handed view model and that we maintain a fair competitive playing field. We want to make sure that the left-hand view isn't the new meta or that players with this preference aren't nerfed.”

Competitive integrity is a core part of Valorant’s future model as a global esport, and jeopardizing that at the cost of providing a new view mode is not something that Riot will be willing to do.

But that being said, the valorant devs are hard at work in making the left-hand support comply with the existing dynamics of the game, and Eldredge ends his comment by saying:

While this is something on our radar, we still need to ensure that we meet the criteria mentioned above and to do so we'll need to put these changes through rigorous competitive and artistic testing. With all that in mind, we, unfortunately, don't have a date we can share for when we think this will be available to players.