Valorant, Riot Games' free-to-play competitive first-person hero shooter, is coming up on its second anniversary. It remains a striking success, and Riot has already announced plans to expand Valorant onto mobile platforms. What it hasn't promised, however, is that Valorant will eventually be released on consoles. While Riot has previously said it was "prototyping" a console version of Valorant, no announcement has followed. That may be changing soon, however, going off recent clues.
There are two significant pieces of evidence indicating that Riot Games may be moving closer to releasing Valorant on PlayStation and Xbox platforms. First, there are multiple Riot Games job listings for console-focused positions working on Valorant. Perhaps more persuasive are two lines of code hinting at console support recently put into Valorant as part of an update. To be clear, there's no official confirmation of a console version of Valorant yet, so this remains a rumor for the time being. The evidence is persuasive, though.
The job listings found on Riot Games' website include positions for multiple Senior Game Designers, as well as a Software Engineering Manager. The Software Engineering Manager is specifically tasked with transforming the Valorant development team into a "multi-platform studio." The first responsibility for the position is "to bring the Valorant experience to consoles." It doesn't get much clearcut than that. However, building toward bringing Valorant to consoles is much different than releasing it on consoles.
That's where the recent Valorant update makes things interesting. Two specific strings were included in the Valorant update found within the game's files. The strings read "Connection to 'PSN' has been lost," and "Connection to Xbox LIVE has been lost." It's the first indication that official support for PlayStation and Xbox consoles has been officially added to the live version of Valorant. It's a step, albeit a small one, toward full support of Valorant on consoles.
Between the files and the job listings, it seems obvious that Riot has moved beyond prototyping and is actively working toward bringing Valorant to consoles. With that said, that doesn't mean that the process is very far along. When Valorant will come to consoles remains an unanswered question and will likely remain so for some time.
What's really important is that multiplayer shooter fans would love to see Valorant on consoles, and it now seems like Riot Games is going to deliver what they want. If those fans have been patient for the past year and a half, they'll likely continue to be so until Riot's ready to officially launch Valorant on PlayStation and Xbox.
Valorant is available now on PC.