Riot Rolls Back "Technical Nightmare" Patch For Valorant Hours After Deployment

Yesterday, Riot Games rolled out a major patch for Valorant, bringing new agent Skye, a new map, Icebox, and a bunch of tuning to sentinels and initiators. The patch was meant to invigorate the game as its first big tournament series, First Strike, got underway.

Just a few hours later, however, Riot Games took the remarkable step of rolling back the patch update, which it described on Twitter as a "technical nightmare." The patch will be redeployed later in the week, once issues have been sorted out and they're less likely to interfere with First Strike.

Real talk: 1.11 has been a technical nightmare.

In 30 minutes, we'll be rolling back the patch for North America, Brazil, and LATAM (one at a time). We're also delaying all other regions until we get a fix. We know we've said this every patch, but thanks for sticking by. [1/2]

— VALORANT (@PlayVALORANT) October 27, 2020

As Valorant's game director explained, the rollback only affects files that were added to the game. Any progress made is tied to your account, so that will remain.

It's not a great look for any game to have to roll back a major update, especially when it's trying to draw the spotlight to itself with a well-publicized tournament series. On the bright side, Riot was honest about the issues and took swift action to address them. Hopefully, this will result in more stringent testing before further Valorant updates go live -- and further good communication after they do.