The Valorant Community Is Not Happy With New VCT 2024 Season Plan

Riot Games released their plan for the 2024 Valorant Season, with some new additions to “improve” the professional circuit.

Valorant released a video explaining the entire 2024 format, which you can watch below.

THE #VCT RETURNS FEBRUARY 16TH!

Here’s everything you need to know about VCT 2024 👇 pic.twitter.com/nwP6RyW1Gu

— VALORANT Champions Tour (@ValorantEsports) January 17, 2024

First, let’s check out the competitors of the four VCT regions. You read that right: four regions! The VCT has expanded to China, which will have its own league. 

Teams who were promoted in 2023 have joined the list of teams. Each of the regions will have eleven competitors for the title of the “Valorant World Champion”.

All regions will hold a “Kickoff Tournament”, followed by two stages of International League competition and two international Masters tournaments to determine the qualified teams for Champions 2024.

VCT Kickoff Tournament

The Kickoff Tournament begins in February. Teams from each region will qualify for Masters Madrid, the first of two Masters tournaments. The Kickoff Tournament and Masters Madrid will be good ways to figure out which teams will be the best throughout the year.

This new system with the Kickoff Tournament adds more matches to the Valorant year and competitive season, which means fans can have more Valorant to watch. However, the tournament format is receiving a lot of backlash from the community because it will only feature eleven teams.

Not only is this an “odd” number of teams, leading to Group C having three teams, but the main issue is that there aren’t enough participants to make a good show.

The Issue

Having only two teams per region qualify for the Kickoff Tournament means most teams will not get to play Valorant internationally.

The biggest issue is that fans will not be able to see enough of their team to compete in VCT. Plus, the offseasons are way too long, giving an even bigger gap for fans to watch their favorite team compete.

We will likely see teams like Fnatic, Paper Rex, and NRG play more often in more tournaments, but these are the best teams in the world. What about the teams who cannot compete with them all the time?

These lower-tier rosters will only have chances to compete in regional leagues and will not be able to prove themselves in international competition.

Community Takes

Fans are outraged because most teams only get ten matches across both splits in 2024 instead of ten matches per split. So, these teams would only play five matches per split and only ten matches for the ENTIRE YEAR!

i didnt realize it until i reread the article but teams are only getting 10 matches across BOTH splits this year and not 10 PER split.

Which being very honest 5 matches in a split is just not enough time for teams to really get their stuff together and figure out what works.… pic.twitter.com/DgW4WAE1tH

— willminder (@willminder) January 18, 2024

Many participants are salaried teams, meaning their organizations pay their players. However, not every team will make it to Masters or Champions. Esports orgs will have to pay their Valorant rosters monthly salaries to play ten matches per year if this format is kept. 

This seems absurd and will hurt the Tier 2 scene in Valorant, especially when there aren’t that many third-party tournaments like CS2 and Dota 2.