The VALORANT development team at Riot Games released a developer update on the morning of Tuesday, Apri 21. The primary subjects of the update were the game balance conversation centered around Raze, who is considered to be the most powerful agent in the game, and concerns surrounding how VALORANT Is planning on putting Anti-Cheat measures into action on a new level.

In the most recent update to the VALORANT Closed Beta, Patch 0.47+, started off by addressing Raze's power level within the game compared to the rest of the agents. Raze has been toned down in Patch 0.47+ in aspects that take away from her intended identity as a high-threat duelist.

New patch or not, Raze has been the talk of the proverbial town in terms of VALORANT imbalances in-game. Trevor Romleski, VALORANT's lead game designer, addressed the plethora of responses from the community regarding Raze: “Raze has been a polarizing character in VALORANT, we’ve seen feedback ranging from ‘Raze is fine’ to ‘Pls delete now.’ This has also raised the question about lethal damage from abilities in VALORANT, and when (if at all) does it make sense."

"We don’t expect the common case of lethal abilities to be outright killing the opponent, especially at higher levels of play,"  Romleski continued. "As awareness and quick response to lethal abilities increases, the value should shift from outright killing someone to the other areas of value this ability type provides."

The other main focus of the VALORANT developer update was concerns around its anti-cheat software, Vanguard. For Vanguard, Riot Games has essentially taken the League of Legends anti-cheat software and applied it to start upon booting up to ensure protection across all present and future Riot titles. The increased access of Vanguard, which exceeds the League of Legends client, has brought up concerns within the VALORANT community regarding player privacy.

VALORANT's anti-cheat lead, Paul Chamberlain, explained how the Closed Beta process was helping them defend against potential current and future hacks and similar exploits. "As is the goal of working in a closed beta, we’ve gotten a ton of compatibility inputs and lessons in stress-testing that help us improve our tools every day," said Chamberlain. "We’re also adapting them as hackers start to attack the game, and we’re working hard to make our systems as secure, performant, and compatible as possible."

VALORANT'S Closed Beta phase will continue on Patch 0.47+, and the full game is slated for a summer 2020 release. 

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