There’s no release date for the replays just yet.
Riot Games confirmed on Tuesday, May 21 that its developers are currently working on making a replay system for VALORANT and gave fans a first glimpse of the feature. Bear in mind, however, that replays are "nowhere near launch."
Though the footage of VALORANT's replay prototype is rather short, we can see the developers' direction. The replay system has a user-friendly UI with a bunch of useful commands such as pause and play, cycle agent, and free cam mode, as you can see below.
VALORANT's tech lead Marcus Reid emphasized this is just a prototype for now that's nowhere near launch and explained why they're taking so long to roll out the replay system.
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The difficulties of implementing replays to VALORANT
Reid said that the developers designed VALORANT to "maximize performance, stability, and competitive integrity online," and that replays introduce different aspects they had never thought about when making the game.
"For example, when viewing a replay, time might be paused," Reid said. "Or you might want to review a specific round in a match. Unreal [Engine] gives us a lot for free on replays, but we didn't plan for these scenarios upfront. There are a plethora of issues with maps, abilities, weapons, as well as visual and audio effects that we need to work through to make them replay-ready."
Reid brought actual examples of how replays aren't working as intended as of now such as abilities not activating properly during replays and map mechanics going bust.
Even though replays aren't coming to VALORANT any time soon, it was nice to see Riot is finally putting efforts into it. While we'll have to wait to enjoy replays in VALORANT, there's plenty of new content coming to the game soon including a new map pool rotation and agent balance changes via Patch 8.11.
Patch 8.11 will roll out in "early June", likely a couple of days after VCT Masters Shanghai concludes. And will definitely shaken up the meta for VALORANT Champions in August.
That's all for now. Stay tuned to esports.gg for more VALORANT news and guides.
