Riot Games answered my questions about its Valorant esports overhaul

Riot Games is revamping the Valorant competitive circuit in 2027 — and they answered some of my questions about the big changes they’re making.

For the past few years, Valorant esports has been defined by its “partnership” system, wherein a set of teams largely chosen in 2022 compete in the game’s high profile main circuit, the Valorant Champions Tour. Other aspirants were relegated to tier 2, a morass of small tournaments and also-ran organizations that, once a year, would burp out a few teams to try their luck in tier 1.

On Wednesday, Riot announced a major shakeup of the format, with an aim to transform the closed ecosystem into an open one. The headline change is that teams previously forced to slug it out in tier 2 will soon be able to fight for a spot at major events in the circuit through open qualifiers, encouraging real competition and (hopefully) shaking the incumbent teams out of complacency. So far, the reaction from participants in the scene has been positive — though stick around to the end for a more skeptical take.

The night before the announcement, I sent Riot a list of questions about the new format. They sent back the following answers, attributed to Leo Faria, the Global Head of Valorant Esports and Commissioner of the Valorant Champions Tour.

The following interview has been lightly edited for clarity.

ReaderGrev: There’s a reference to non-partnered teams and Championship points in the announcement. Will non-partner teams be able to qualify to global events through Champs points alone?

Leo Faria: We’re still finalizing the exact competitive format, but our intent is clear: we want a system that treats performance consistently across both partnered and non-partnered teams. That means ensuring that qualification paths, whether through Championship Points or other mechanisms, are fair, merit-based, and aligned with how teams perform over the season. The goal is to create meaningful opportunities for top-performing teams regardless of partnership status, while maintaining competitive integrity across the ecosystem.

Is there a number of partner teams Riot is aiming for in 2027? Will the number be the same across all regions?

We haven’t locked a final number yet, as we want to make that call after reviewing the initial wave of applications and evaluating what’s best for sport.

Does the partnership applications process mean all current partners will have to reapply?

Yes. All current partner teams will need to reapply as part of this process. This is an intentional reset point for the ecosystem, it gives us an opportunity to evaluate all teams against the same criteria moving forward, while also allowing organizations to demonstrate how they’ve evolved and how they plan to contribute to the next phase of VALORANT esports.

There’s a passage in the announcement that says: “Finally, a portion of the funds will be dedicated to Game Changers each year.” What is “the funds” referring to here?

This refers to a portion of the overall revenue pool tied to the competitive ecosystem. Our goal is to further incentivize investment in Game Changers by directly rewarding organizations that field teams and successfully qualify to the Game Changers Championship. These rewards would sit on top of existing prize pools, reinforcing our commitment to growing that ecosystem in a sustainable way.

Will teams participating in open qualifiers be subject to some of the same restrictions that partner teams face? I’m imagining a scenario in which a small team backed by a gambling/betting sponsor makes it to a Cup or Masters event, for example.

At the highest level, we aim to have one single set of policies and rules that apply to all teams in the VCT, partners and non-partners. That said, opening up the ecosystem introduces new scenarios that we need to account for, including around sponsorships and competitive standards. We’re actively working through those details now, and we expect to share more concrete guidelines later this year. The goal will be to strike the right balance, preserving competitive openness while ensuring consistency with the standards we’ve established for the broader VCT ecosystem.

What does the new Cup format mean for the requirement that teams have a presence/house their players in Los Angeles, Berlin, Seoul, etc.?

Teams will no longer be required to reside in hub cities. That said, they will be required to declare a home region where they’ll compete at and play open qualifiers from. From there, we expect all teams to travel for cups, similar to how they travel for global events today. We’ll continue to use our studios strategically for early stages of Cups, but our goal is to travel as much as possible and bring the VCT to more fans around the world. We’re also hoping this change will bring back energy and excitement to these home regions, creating a more healthy balance between regional, international, and global competition.

More generally, I’m also curious about when the process began to revamp the VCT format, and what those first meetings/conversations were like. How quickly did it take to land on the format we’re on now? What is this restructure solving for?

This direction is grounded in several years of learnings, and it’s something the team has been actively developing over the past year. We’ve taken insights from what’s worked, the strong response to VCT CN roadshows and the consistent feedback from the community, particularly around the excitement about the open path to Champions.

That said, the format is not finalized. It’s one of the areas we’re spending the most time pressure-testing internally, because getting it right matters. Right now, the focus is on ensuring the system can adapt to the unique dynamics of each region, rather than forcing a one-size-fits-all model.

At a high level, the ambition is to rebuild that sense of possibility across the ecosystem, to re-ignite the dream for players everywhere, while also expanding the footprint of the sport beyond centralized studios and into more cities and regions around the world.

Two opposite reactions from folks in the scene

When Riot’s announcement was published Wednesday morning, I reached out to a few people whose opinions I trust on the state of the competitive scene. The first is Marco Mereu, the founder of the esports organization M80, a poster child for prospective tier 2 success — and also for the scene’s pitfalls. The organization narrowly missed qualifying for tier 1 two years in a row.

“I think the announcement is an absolute home run for Valorant esports,” Mereu told me via Twitter DM. “More competition, higher stakes, regional teams and a more open ecosystem will all lead to a bigger and better esport. For teams the operational changes are also welcome. Not being tied to a specific city will help with operational costs and allow us to focus more resources on players. Valorant has always had the potential to be one of the biggest esports worldwide and with these changes I think it will reach it's potential.”

The poster child thing is no joke, by the way. In a video announcing the new format, Anna Donlon, the studio head at Riot Games leading Valorant, can briefly be seen wearing an M80 jersey. (Check the 1:17 mark.)

“Riot asked us a for a jersey a few weeks ago but we had no idea what for,” Mereu told me. That’s funny, I said. “Yea I literally shat my pants,” Mereu answered. (He said I could quote him on that.)

I think Mereu’s view is representative of the consensus on these changes, at least from what I can see on social media. But another person I spoke to — an experienced VCT coach who requested anonymity to speak candidly — took a more skeptical tone. With the obvious caveat that some of this is up in the air because the details surrounding the changes haven’t been formalized, I thought this person’s perspective might be valuable to readers. (These answers came via text conversation; I’ve edited the responses for clarity and length.)

ReaderGrev: What’s your gut reaction to these changes?

I think the first year of this is going to be really rough. The "every game matters" stuff is a fairly cheap marketing slogan, especially coming off of a format that had very, very few ‘dead’ games anyway. I don't think people have really understood what the calendar looks like yet.

It’s pretty clear that Riot is trying to cut costs and longer-term liabilities and this is the driving force behind the move. They can pay less per partnered team in terms of stipend. There's also consistent rumors that they're going to reduce the total number of partnered teams per region. They're trying to put more of the money they have to pay out into things where it's a conditional liability, e.g. skin money. It creates fewer long term entanglements for them, basically. I also expect the events to be much shorter than the league seasons were, so they probably pay out less overall on that front.

I'm also not convinced that this is going to be as good for salaries, contracts, etc. as everyone thinks. I think you'll see shorter term contracts, quicker cuts on players and coaches, so even if headline numbers are bigger, conditions for most pros are going to be worse overall. But I might be too pessimistic on that; it depends on how much money they unlock with this move. This lets them loosen up on oversight on teams, which they kind of have to do as part of the push to get gambling sponsors/money into the ecosystem.

Basically, you’re retreating from full professionalism for large chunks of the tier 1 teams. This model works in Counter-Strike because there are so many LANs and gambling money, but it makes for a rough player and coach experience in most tier 2 esports with few third-party partners, etc. The closest analog here is Apex Legends, and Apex esports has always been in a horrible spot.

What do you mean by retreat from full professionalism?

It will mean contracts going from being considered on a seasonal basis to being a transaction to get X team to the next LAN. It becomes a lot harder to find a long term partner on the team side, and expectations/responsibilities from the team side are lower. Unless you see a massive appreciation in the overall pool, it becomes like Apex, where orgs become less like sports teams and more like a dude bankrolling a poker player: They're giving you a tiny bit of convenience in exchange for a shot at the prize pool. Unless the pot is huge, it turns into a part-time pastime in that sense; semi-professionalism supplemented by other stuff. You can argue the merits of that all day, but it's a huge retreat from what Riot have always prioritized.

A circuit like this will likely mean the same for the sort of guy who was on the 9th best team in a VCT region as it does in Apex, where that sort of player gets to LANs but is un-orged or barely orged. You're no longer a full-time professional just from the game like you would be in football or whatever. You can argue of course whether that's good or bad. For Riot it's clearly good because it encourages that player to make content, grow the game, whatever. But I would argue that the game isn't quite big enough that there's room for everyone doing that, and I think it's harder to make it a vocation, especially for coaches.

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