Riot has been huge in esports for many years now thanks to League of Legends, so when the studio announced a competitive shooter, professional tournament plans were always going to follow soon after. This week, Riot announced the ‘Ignition Series', a pro-level tournament circuit for Valorant.
The Ignition Series will consist of multiple events taking place in different territories. The first will take place at the G2 Invitational, featuring eight teams from EMEA regions. The matches will take place between June 19th and June 21st, with each team competing for a €15,000 prize.
At the same time as the G2 Invitational, a similar tournament will be taking place in Japan- the Rage Invitational. This event will feature 16 teams battling it out for a top prize of 500,000 Yen.
In the last week of June, another EMEA tournament will take place and another invitational will also take place in North America.
The Ignition Series is just the first step in Riot's plan to turn Valorant into an esports giant. There will be more to come in later months and we'll likely see some even bigger, higher paying tournaments in 2021.
KitGuru Says: Valorant is already a pretty huge game, but further updates and continued interest from esports orgs are what will drive the game in the years to come. It will be interesting to see how well the first batch of Valorant tournaments go down. Will any of you be tuning in?