But don’t worry, there is no cross-play. On the occasion of Valorant’s first anniversary, Riot announced Wednesday that a new version of the tactical first-person shooter will be available on mobile platforms.
While the announcement doesn’t contain many details about the game, Polygon had the opportunity to speak with Valorant’s executive producer Anna Donlon to learn a bit more about the project.
According to Donlon, the move to mobile devices began with a checklist of questions about the core elements of Valorant and whether they could be implemented on phones. If any of the items on the checklist could not be met, Riot would not pursue the project. The most important thing for the team, according to Donlon, was to make sure it didn’t create an incomplete version of Valorant for mobile players. The idea is that the game will not simply be a port of the PC version of Valorant to mobile, but a unique mobile experience.
“We didn’t start out saying ‘we’re going to do Valorant on mobile,’ we started out saying ‘we can do Valorant on mobile,’ with a lot of skepticism,” Donlon said. “It’s important to us that everything you get when you play the game on PC, you get when you play Valorant on mobile. But we have to recognize that the needs of mobile gamers are different.”
Unfortunately, he did not specify what these differences are. However, Donlon stressed that the mobile version of Valorant will not affect the PC version.
“Just as we will not offer an inferior experience to mobile gamers, we will not compromise on the PC experience,” he said, “We are not trying to turn Valorant PC gamers into Valorant mobile gamers or vice versa. […] We are absolutely committed to keeping the quality of PC games at the same level, if not higher, and we will not compromise in the mobile market.”
As part of ensuring the best experience for each platform, Donlon said Riot has no plans for cross-play between the two versions of the game at this time.
Riot is planning to create a console version of Valorant. For now, however, the team is only exploring this possibility; it will take a backseat to the mobile version, which has proven to be a more natural fit for the game.
“Interestingly, I think the transition to mobile has been a little easier for us,” Donlon said. “Console is obviously suited for FPS, right? […] But that type of game, a tactical shooter, is not as easy on console. It’s not easy to achieve that level of competitive honesty on a platform where the controller is competing with you for control. And we didn’t want to do that. […] So we found that it’s faster and easier to get to mobile platforms. ”
As for when players will have the opportunity to play Valorant Mobile, Donlon says, “We’re not confirming any dates yet, but we hope to see it in the second year.”
