Riot Games confirmed that its new competitive shooter,Valorant, will not have loot boxes. The game has been compared toCounter-Strike: Global OffensiveandOverwatch, which does have loot boxes, but it seems that Riot has other plans to make money from its game.
Speaking to Polygon,Valorant’s executive producer Anna Donlon confirmed that the game won’t have loot boxes but it will have other forms of microtransactions. Just like Riot Games' other title,League of Legends,Valorantwill sell cosmetic items such as weapon skins and sprays. These cosmetic items can be earned by playing the game, bought from the store, or gained through the game’s battle pass.
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The game will have a “couple of different progression systems,” said Donlon, andValorant’s weapon skins will be upgradeable, though the producer didn’t offer any more information about it. Games likeOverwatchdo have sprays, and there are skins that change the look of a character’s weapon, however, the decision to makeValorant’s weapon skins upgradeable could be a good way to help distinguish the two games.Valoranthas been heavily compared to the Blizzard game, so differentiation will be important.
Riot Games will not offer character skins at launch, either. Any character skins added to the game “would have to be in a way that there’s absolutely nothing to impact the gameplay.” Riot Games has designed each ofValorant’s playable charactersin a special way, so players' eyes are drawn upwards, to a character’s torso and head. This is why the legs of the characters look more boring compared to the rest of their bodies.
In a lawsuit, PUBG Corp. admitted thatPlayerUnknown’s Battlegroundsskins do affect character gameplay. The cause of that lawsuit wasn’t because skins affect gameplay, but it is something that developers and players have been thinking much more about.
Character skins are something that Riot is “interested in exploring” and Riot has teased other post-launch updates to the game such asnewValorantcharacters and maps. However, if adding new skins will somehow change a character’s hitbox or how easy it is for other players to take them down, it seems very unlikely that they will be added to the game.
Valorantwill launch sometime during Summer 2020 for the PC.
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