Riot Games’ latest FPS offering, Valorant, has got quite the head-start in the gaming community. A genre of game pretty much dominated by a handful titles was welcoming to the League of Legends creator’s FPS.
While the game was launched worldwide on 2 June, there’s no servers for the Indian subcontinent specifically yet. Currently players from the country are routed to the South East Asian servers. However that is likely to change soon as during a live webinar along with Paytm First Games Riot Games head of publishing, India and South Asia Sukamal Pegu that dedicated servers for Indian players an be expected by this year end while mentioning it might even be the month before Christmas, which should be by November latest.
For Valorant to succeed in the long term, competitive play will be one of the most significant pillars in that strategy. For us the priority would be to enable the infrastructure for a seamless play experience for the region while at the same time enabling partners and tournament organisers to create the grass-root competitive scene for the game to thrive.
-Sukamal Pegu to AnimationXpress
Interestingly, during today’s webinar Paytm First Games (PFG) esports consultant Anurag Khurana also mentioned about building esports opportunities from the grass-root level and “enabling Riot IPs for India”. PFG had recently partnered with Riot Games to bring in Team Fight Tactics Tournaments to India and the brand also announced three sets of tournaments for Riot’s latest turn based card game Legends of Runeterra which will start later this year. Hence, a collaboration between the two entities can be a possibility for the Indian esports scene in regards to Valorant, nothing has been confirmed as of now.
Pegu had further said, “While we have plans on how we want to do Valorant esports as a publisher, our priority for India would be to welcome organizers to run with the IP for the next 6 months.”
Today’s panel also featured YouTube streamer “Gagandeep ‘Sikhwarrior’ SIngh and pro CS:GO player Tejas “Ace” Sawant who discussed the possibilities for content creators around Valorant and the expectations from Riot’s plans in terms of pro play.
While the esports scene in India is currently dominated by mobile titles, there is a sizable number of players in the FPS side of things, which Riot Games would surely like to tap into. As Pegu informs, “Valorant will be a focus game for Riot India. We have exciting publishing plans for India where you will see us investing in infrastructure, local payments, player experiences and partnerships.”
Riot Games set shop in India in January of 2017 but did not push their flagship property, League of Legends, in the country. With Valorant and upcoming mobile version of League of Legends titled Wild Rift, Riot might be willing to take a stab at the blossoming esports ecosystem in India.
