Bugs are a common nuisance in the gaming industry. Unfortunately, developers can’t plan for everything and as more players log in to play a game, the more issues arise with some of them escalating past being a minor bug to becoming game-breaking. Riot Games’Valoranthas had its fair share of these game-breakers in its past (like withAstra and her abilities), with the newest exploit causing problems.The tactical FPS genre has been dominated by titles likeCounter-Strikefor years, and Riot Games' looked to challenge the titan with its newest title,Valorant. Much likeCounter-Strike,Valorantplaces players in a 5v5 plant-and-defuse setting, however, what separates the latter from the former is the characters.Valoranttakes a page from hero shooters likeOverwatchand gives players unique abilities to turn the tides in their favor. At its core, the abilities have similar functions toCounter-Strike’s utilities with smokes and flashes being unique abilities for characters with the newest game-breaker targeting flashes.RELATED:Popular Twitch Streamer Shroud Joins Sentinels' Valorant TeamDiscovered by Sentinels professional player, Jordan “Zellsis” Montemurro, the game-breaking bug targets flashes and negates their effect. By going into the settings menu and toggling “Hide User Interface In Game” any and all incoming flashes are completely rendered useless. Zellsis tried it with a teammate in between rounds with a fellowSkye on his teamwith no effect rendered, and then tried it with an enemy Phoenix which also had no effect. Sentinels head coach, Shane “Rawkus” Flaherty, can be heard in the background being utterly shocked while Zellsis seemingly jokes as to why his flashes never work due to players possibly having knowledge on this exploit.
Within hours, Zellsis' video received a ton of viewing time with Riot Games taking immediate notice of the game-breaking bug. Riot turned to disabling the competitive queues to fix the bug which is standard protocol for theValorantdeveloper in order to preserve integrity at the highest levels. While game-breaking bugs are a detractor from the overall experience, this isn’t the first timeValoranthas faced issues like thisin the past, yet Riot has proven to be quite hasty at correcting them.
Five hours after shutting down the competitive queues, Riot announced the issue was fixed and thatValorantcompetitivewas up and running. Hopefully, this is the last time players see or experience a bug of this nature with.
