As someone who has been following the gaming industry for decades, I must say that the news about VALORANT coming to PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S is quite exhilarating! Having worked with various game developers over the years, I can empathize with the challenges Riot Games faces in aligning content drops, bug fixes, and all the rest across platforms. The certification process for console games has always been a beast, especially for live-service titles.
An Australian team, relatively small but mighty, embarked on their most significant venture yet. Here’s the account of how six homegrown developers collaborated with Riot Games to convert their highly popular Tactical Shooter, Valorant, from PC to console platforms – a groundbreaking first for PlayStation and Xbox releases by this publishing titan.
Excitement started building when whispers about a tactical shooter aiming to challenge Valve’s Counter-Strike surfaced. Later on, Riot Games, well-known for League of Legends, declared their entry into a new genre with this tactical shooter, which was then referred to as Project A.
Since its development commenced in 2014, it was specifically designed with the core Tactical Shooter gaming community in focus. Given that these gamers predominantly use PCs, where performance and speed are crucial, the developers initially focused solely on this platform, disregarding potential adaptations for other hardware. This game, later named Valorant, was primarily tailored to run optimally on PCs.
As a passionate gamer, I can’t help but get excited when a gaming giant like Riot Games makes a big move. They’ve just taken over an Australian studio, giving it the name Riot Sydney. And what was their first mission? A challenge indeed! They wanted to bring their latest game, Valorant, onto consoles, and they wanted it done quickly. It’s moments like these that make the gaming world buzz with anticipation.
Riot Sydney begins anew
Riot Games maintained an office in Sydney, Australia for seven years, from 2013 to 2020. Primarily, this small team managed local esports projects such as the Oceanic Pro League. Unfortunately, both the competitive circuit and the office were closed simultaneously, affecting a total of 10 employees.
Toward the close of 2022, Riot Games decided to invest in the local gaming sector again. They announced their acquisition of Wargaming Sydney for an unspecified amount, which added numerous skilled professionals to their team to strengthen the League of Legends, Valorant, and technological departments at Riot as stated in a press release.
Two years after the groundbreaking announcement in Australia, Game Producer Natasha Wolf has unveiled that the Wargaming team was abruptly plunged into a challenging situation, as they were assigned one of Riot’s critical projects during that period.
When Riot set up its new team in Sydney for the first time, they were tasked with creating the console version of Valorant immediately. Since this was Riot’s first venture into the console gaming world, there was no pre-existing system or guidelines to follow, and nothing to build upon from past experiences. The developers had to start completely anew and get everything organized quickly.
In October 2022, Riot Games CEO Nicolo Laurent casually mentioned November 2023 as their goal, but at that point, they hadn’t even received a “developer kit” yet, according to Wolf during her panel at GCAP 2024 (Game Connect Asia Pacific), which TopMob attended. In simpler terms, they didn’t have the necessary tools for development yet, despite the CEO having set a specific timeline.
It’s fortunate that the team had a pre-existing product to refer to since Valorant quickly climbed to become one of the most popular and watched games on PC. As Wolf explained, “We were already familiar with its key features, our task was to make it function similarly as what we had on PC.
Nailing the fundamentals and making it pretty later
Kicking off this big undertaking primarily involved focusing on the crucial foundational elements that would breathe life into the PC experience, spanning both Xbox and PlayStation platforms. Non-essential features were generally set aside to ensure we prioritized what mattered most.
One aspect that didn’t make the final cut was text chat. Although essential for PC users and often replacing voice chat, typing as the primary means of communication wasn’t universally regarded as a crucial element for console gaming by most developers. Wolf acknowledged there were disagreements about this decision, but ultimately she had to make a clear choice on the matter.
She clarified that the text chat functionality has been excluded from our features. Upon investigating further, she discovered the substantial effort and resources required for its implementation. Consequently, she advocated against including it during the initial console release, as this would have added to our expenses.
A distinct hurdle in the console gaming world, though it might seem peculiar, was associated with the game’s loading screens. While working within Riot’s custom PC client, they have full control over their actions. However, on consoles, things are different because each platform has specific certification processes to comply with, which restricts flexibility.
One essential condition is that there should be no “stationary display screens.” As Senior Software Engineer Rory Dungan stated during a different GCAP panel discussion, any game developed for PlayStation needs to either display a spinning wheel or a progress bar indicating the load.
Making even seemingly minor changes, such as integrating animations, might lead to unforeseen problems. For instance, we discovered that when animations were added, the game experienced brief freezes of a few seconds. These pauses are critical because they are long enough to prevent the game from passing PlayStation’s certification process, which means it won’t be able to run.
In a similar vein, enabling Rest Mode on PlayStation turned out to be quite a significant issue. Although this feature might not typically cross players’ minds, it was a major focus during the development of the port by Riot Sydney.
Kayla Panozzo, the Engineering Manager, pointed out that despite seeming straightforward, there are numerous possibilities that could arise. For instance, if you suspend your account on PS5 and then log into PC before resolving a potential ban issue on console, it could lead to complications. Although this situation is quite unusual, Riot Games takes precautions by checking for even the least likely instances to guarantee approval of their console ports at launch.
In her role as producer, Wolf explained that she deliberately set aside a six-month period towards the end of development for meeting certification needs on both Xbox and PlayStation platforms. The approval process by these console giants can indeed become quite complex. Minor issues may arise during the approval phase, and resolving them could lead to the emergence of fresh problems. Indeed, it’s a delicate balancing act.
Even though Valorant is now available on consoles and continues to receive regular updates as a live-service game, its launch was merely the start of its journey.
“Console is just as important as PC now”
The announcement of Valorant’s console version was revealed on June 8, 2024, during Summer Game Fest, and the Closed Beta testing started a week later. This revelation was a significant milestone that provided a satisfying moment for the team, as Wolf put it, but there were still numerous tasks remaining to be completed.
The rapid success of Valorant on gaming consoles resulted in a significant increase in active players, currently over 35 million per month according to Anna Donland, the studio head. This growth has caused Riot Games to reassess their priorities internally, with Panozzo emphasizing that console versions are now just as crucial as PC versions within Riot’s global teams.
She pointed out, ‘It seems unfair that I must address so many console issues while dealing with my own PC problems. We should aim for a more adaptable perspective.’
The highly anticipated game, VALORANT, is set to launch on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S starting from June 14, 2024. The initial release will be available in the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, various European countries, and Japan, with more regions to follow soon. However, cross-play between PC and console versions will not be supported. If you’re eager to join the action, registration is open now!
— Valorant News (@ValorINTEL) June 7, 2024
Coordinating content updates, bug fixes, and more across various platforms might seem straightforward in theory, but it’s often more challenging than it appears. For instance, on PC, Riot Games has the flexibility to deploy new builds whenever they deem fit since it’s their own client. However, on consoles like Xbox and PlayStation, the certification process is quite stringent and may take up to a week for approval of new updates with live-service titles.
Making modifications or enhancements may cause temporary issues such as delays or hiccups in the development process. It’s understandable that players might express their dissatisfaction during these times, but Riot accepts this feedback, aware of the upcoming improvements. Dungan humorously stated, “When the players are content, they’re engrossed in the game. When they’re not, they’re on Reddit, so there’s a tendency to focus on the negative side.
There are two key workarounds to the lengthy patch certification process, however. Firstly, there’s hotfixing. This can be the play whenever any game-breaking issues rear their head, but it can’t be adopted for anything of real substance like new skins or map adjustments. “No binary changes, so no code or shaders. Only want to hotfix in the case of critical bugs,” Dungan said.
In the future, as Riot continues to strengthen its partnerships with console manufacturers like Sony and Microsoft, there may come a time when quick updates or patches can be implemented. As explained by Panozzo, if you consistently meet their certification requirements, it could mean that new updates can be released within 24 hours, automatically approved on their respective systems.
With console ports flourishing and millions of new players getting involved, has the Sydney team reached their objective? While they’ve successfully met their demanding goal of transferring the highly popular IP to new platforms at an impressive pace, allowing them to relax slightly, there’s still much more work to be done. The upcoming challenge is to establish a level of equality between console and PC versions in the long term.
Wolf stated, “We must agree on the platforms where we’ll be working in the long term. At present, if we were to introduce new social features, we would need to develop them twice. To avoid this redundancy, we aim to coordinate future updates and streamline content delivery.” In simpler terms, they want to make sure that when they create new features or content, they won’t have to do the same work twice on different platforms.
At this moment, we don’t have information about when console versions of the game might be released in various regions or if there will be mid-generation updates like a PS5 Pro patch for better performance. However, it is evident that the Valorant team in Sydney and Riot Games as a whole are aiming to provide equal support for all platforms going forward.
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2024-10-08 02:49