Riot is renaming Valorant’s confusing top rank for launch

You won’t be Valorant ranked Valorant player anymore

Valorant’s closed beta is almost over and the game’s top players are sitting pretty at the rank of, yes, Valorant. But after the game’s official release, those top players are going to have a new, less confusing rank.

Valorant’s current ranks start out at Iron then go to Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum, Diamond, Immortal, and end at Valorant, the top rank. While that name makes a lot of sense on paper — since it’s the name of the heroic organization that many of the in-game characters are a part of — it isn’t exactly clear in practice.

Imagine a streamer explaining to their chat that they’re a Valorant ranked Valorant player. Or worse, if a friend asked you what rank you were and you said Valorant, the entire conversation could devolve into a “Who’s on first” bit in no time.

Riot is well aware of the confusion. In a recent email interview with Valorant senior designer Sean Szopinski, Riot confirmed to Polygon that the team plans to change the Valorant rank’s name for the launch of the game.

“When we were brainstorming these names, Valorant seemed like a really awesome choice for the top rank,” Szopinski said. “What could be cooler than climbing the ranks, aspiring to become an elite and heroic Valorant, the personification of the game itself! You guys are right though, it’s a bit confusing. We get it. I get it. We’ll change it for launch.”

While Szopinski didn’t reveal what the ranks new name would be, it’s worth noting that the top rank in Riot’s MOBA, League of Legends, is called Challenger, which would work fine here too if Riot doesn’t mind the overlap.

Szopinski also revealed that the Valorant rank would be a little more exciting sometime after launch. In the closed beta, Valorant ranked players don’t have any incentive to keep playing once they hit the top rank. As long as they’re winning, there’s no real reward and no way to see how they stack up against the other top ranked players. If they start losing, all that can happen is that they lose their prestigious rank. It’s all risk with no reward. But that won’t be the case in the future.

“As for showing specific rating for top players, this is something that we have discussed a lot and will eventually be part of Valorant’s Competitive Ecosystem,” said Szopinski.

While there’s no word yet of when that system will be released or what exactly it will be, it’s clear that Riot is still making a few adjustments to the highest end of Valorant’s ranked system to make things as clear and rewarding as possible.

Valorant will be free to download when it launches on June 2. According to Valorant global communications lead, Chris Tom, the game’s ranked mode won’t be available at launch but will be released a couple of weeks later.