In a recently released Riot Games developer diary, Valorant Design Director Joe Ziegler described an issue the team ran into. Once Valorant became playable, too many developers were spending too much time playing the game. Ziegler describes having to have one of their “evil” senior producers impose a rule on playtime during work hours because development was noticeably slowing down.
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As exciting as it was for the Valorant development team to be enthralled by their own multiplayer shooter, the goal was still to get Valorant in the hands of players as soon as possible. The dev team’s leadership felt the rules were necessary in order to accomplish that.
Valorant is currently running its “Friend & Family” beta, with its closed beta starting April 7. The FF beta means developers are largely playing with other developers, so a lot of ideas can be explored by playing the game. Ideas on paper aren’t always the same as ideas become reality. So playtime during work can be highly valuable, just not in the quantity that Riot was perhaps seeing.
Riot’s employees may have more leeway to play games during work hours than many studios. They’re well-known to foster a culture where employees play lots of games. During former Overwatch pro Seagull’s recent Valorant broadcast, he talked briefly about how good many Riot employees are at the game. He specifically named several League of Legends casters as examples.
For the time being, Valorant remains on-schedule to launch this summer, though a firm release date hasn’t been confirmed as of yet. There’s always a chance for a delay, but odds are it wouldn’t be due to too much game playing during work hours. Rather, it’d be likely due to the COVID-19 pandemic and work-from-home policies. For now, though, Riot’s clearly focused on getting the job done.
Valorant releases this summer on PC.
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