State of Valorant in 2024
Basic Game Info
Valorant is a free-to-play first-person tactical hero shooter developed and published by Riot Games, for Windows. Teased under the codename Project A in October 2019, the game began a closed beta period with limited access on April 7, 2020, followed by a release on June 2, 2020. The development of the game started in 2014. Valorant takes inspiration from the Counter-Strike series, borrowing several mechanics such as the buy menu, spray patterns, and inaccuracy while moving.
When the game launched it was widely popular and played by almost everyone, but the standing question is, how is it doing today?
How is Valorant Doing Now?
Well, the short answer to that is: yeah it is doing well.
In a little longer and more technical version, things stand like this. According to tracking websites, if they are to be trusted, Valorant peaked sometime in the middle of 2023 with over 20 million players playing the game in one month. Now those are some nice numbers.
In these couple of days that we are in 2024 over 7 million players already played the game. And to personal dissatisfaction, I was one of those players.
Oooh dissatisfaction? Wait a second, don’t jump to a conclusion just yet. Yeah, I wasn’t having a nice time but that one is on me (you’ll understand why soon enough).
My Experience Playing Valorant in 2024
The last time I played Valorant “properly” was back in 2021. I was the okayest player out there probably, and was having a quite lot of fun playing it and I was getting better with each passing day.
Since then they’ve released a good amount of new agents and maps. And also a bunch of buffs and nerfs to agents and weapons, that I wasn’t aware of and just too lazy to go through them all.
I mean it was 3 years ago and I wasn’t playing professionally so cut me some slack.
But I was excited to play it again, have some fun, and check out new agents and maps. I went first to play a couple of Swift matches, just to warm up.
I was aware that I’m rusty and it probably wouldn’t go well but to my surprise, it went better than expected. Since it felt like I was a new player again, I played Raze, old and reliable.
Out of the first 5 matches I played, I managed to win 3 and also get 1 match MVP and 2 times team MVP. Pretty solid for old rusty me, right?
That’s exactly what I thought so I jumped straight to play some Unrated games so I can warm up a little more before jumping into some highly competitive Ranked games. I have never been so wrong in my entire life.
Where it went wrong
The match started, and I was hyped to play some “real” matches. In the very first round, I was going slowly, preparing myself to peak corner, ready to face whatever enemy was lurking behind it, and BANG got floored with a headshot before I even realized that someone was there.
My initial thought was “Oh damn dude got really lucky there” but soon enough I’ll come to the realization that it had nothing with luck. And through the rest of the match, I kid you not, the moment I popped somewhere I got 1 shot almost immediately.
Luckily for me, my teammates were better and we won 13-11, and my score was 2/21, it definitely wasn’t a deserved win on my side.
I got stomped on that one, and I thought “Those must have been some high Elo players, next time, it’s definitely going to be better”. And again for the second time in one day, I couldn’t have been more wrong.
Final Thoughts
For the next couple of matches same pattern repeated. I could go on and blame it on lag and that my PC is slow and I need to upgrade it. Or that I’m just rusty and I need to warm up a little more. But the harsh reality is that while I was taking a very long break from Valorant, everybody got better. Now it’s up to me to try and catch up, which I’m looking forward to.
Until next time, I wish you an awesome start to the new year. And also go check out more of my posts.
