Valorant is Riot Games' new big esport.
Valorant is Riot Games' new big esport.
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How Riot Games is gunning for its second big esport with Valorant

  • Posted byby Dean Takahashi
  • Updated
  • 8 min

Riot Games spent a decade building League of Legends into a huge esports phenomenon. And with the first-person shooter game Valorant, the company hopes that it now has a second big game to grow its esports business.

The game sprang from the company’s 10th-anniversary announcement a year ago, when the company disclosed 10 games and other projects in a bid to transform it from being just a League of Legends company. As Riot Games itself said, the “s” in Riot Games is no longer a joke, and the company is making moves to be a big player in multiple esports genres.

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Written by

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.