Professional VALORANT teams will be able to compete on their own servers “soon.”
Esports strategy manager Riley Yurk discussed the competitive scene in today’s Ask VALORANT blog, explaining that Riot is “actively pursuing” Tournament Realms for professional teams.
“In the future, we’ll have fully flushed out Tournament Realms that will give us even more control over the environment that esports is played on,” Yurk said. “We’ll have specific rules around what patches can [sic] be used for certain tournaments to help create the best environment for competitive play. We’re extremely focused on competitive integrity and will continue to adapt our plans in collaboration with both devs and players.”
The first Riot-produced event, First Strike, started off a bit bumpy in North America. A new patch (1.11) was introduced on the same day as the open qualifiers, proving to be unstable and buggy. The update was eventually rolled back and teams were competing on Patch 1.10 instead.
Tournament Realms would help avoid this issue in the future, maintaining stability without compromising competitive integrity.
The First Strike main event will be played on a “separate patchline” globally, starting Dec 3.
