They're really lucky the Mobile Tac Shooter is a very scarce market

right now only CODM which is in a crippled state especially esports, they arent event like 10% of how dominant MLBB is (which is the cause of Wild Rift's downfall)

R6M moved next year, BFM gone, CS2M isnt real, Standoff is only a thing in Russia, no one plays C-OPS, The netease clone wont go far

Riot is blessed by the fact that the only market holder waiting them is a game that's on semi life support and no one really put effort to try get the cake for the last few years

TLDR: The market isnt at MLBB-dominant level yet, CODM is far from one, no other big IPs try for it either

Is there any sort of aim assist in that test?

Tencent opens up recruitment (Android only) for the Playtest of VALORANT Mobile [CN server] which is still called Project C domestically

Test expected to start in September, bit coincidental they start recruitment while Champions is going on
and they havent open up any recruitment since around the same time last year

This is from the Media Day happening earlier today. Which is when the 2025 venues supposed to actually announced. This is not including the 2025 Roadmap that was already announced

• China Champions 2026 and Americas Champions 2027 (on a Personal note: I have a feel they're going to other cities for China, not Shanghai)

• Peak CCV for Champions is 3.45M incl. China numbers, highest Champions so far

• The IL Viewerships: AMER 810K, PAC 481K, EMEA 409K with China blasting at 1.88M on first year

• There are more submitted Pickems compared to LoL Worlds 2023 Pickems

• Over 35M usd for the Skin share revenue this year

• a New VCT Season capsule next year

• Riot remains committed to PC Comp, but CONSOLE COMPETITIVE isn't out of window if there's a demand for it

• Playtest for MOBILE VERSION happens few week ago, game still in intense development but isnt ready to come out yet

• They're actively in discussion regarding the game's possibility of being in the Saudi's EWC << In the calendar there's a small gap in June-July between Post-Toronto and Prior to Stage 2. EWC usually happens in June to August

VCT Indo Instagram posted it earlier than it should be I supposed, Media day is tomorrow 12PM Korea, Indo SMM guy has to set the time wrong

Masters Bangkok
Masters Toronto
Paris Champions

edit: it is leak, Indo account post has been taken down. Indo SMM slips again lol

usualyl dividing is very fluctuate, hard to pin down what is the right formula to divided. But those /10-30 are good start

For Champs watchparty at least I watch primarily Huya most of time theres around like 3 streamers with 3-4M+ heat watchpartying it. I recall this one hit 5M briefly while EDG is about to win but outside EDG/CN matches hovers aroundd that 3-4 or a bit less depending on time

Correct, that's why all CN platforms called is Heat Index instead of just outright Viewership, it's a metric combine of several stuff to indicate how popular the stream are. Not 100% but the closest way you could get a view at how popular a stream is

considering that most of times even in Heat model, only LoL CN and another Mobile game that skims past 10M [within a single stream], VAL joining it are a good sign

.

Translations arent wrong, by that logic LPL has 33million at the same time, so thats an extra 33million more jobless people for you

13 Million heat Index on Bilibili during EDG leading 10-2 in Map 3

CN numbers are Popularity Index, not raw viewership, to put into comparison an ongoing LoL match between BLG and Weibo is at the same time, that one has 33M Index. So This match is in pretty high range for a CN Stream popularity

5 Milion and is dog enough to have a Franchising League Model

They'll have separate devs that wont take away PC version resources

2 Months ago Tencent puts up Job listings for their Chinese server of VALORANT Mobile and this went silent until the past few weeks they start updating the job description again, this time during Champions

I don't think Riot is saving announcement for Champions Finals, just a fun coincidence in timing.

as a side note: in VALM You switch sides after 7 rounds instead of 12, and you need 8 instead of 13 rounds to win the game

I know, thats why I mentioned at the start to use the current league breakdown to count the pre-franchising years

Using the current four league region breakdown (EMEA, Amer, PAC, CN) to retroactively count for the pre-Franchising years:

2021: EMEA 4 // Americas 2 // Pacific 2 // China wasn't given a pathway in 2021 [6 West vs 2 Asia]
2022: EMEA 3 // Americas 4 // Pacific 1 // China 0 // [7-1]
2023: EMEA 2 // Americas 2 // Pacific 2 // China 2 // [4-4]
2024: EMEA 2 // Americas 3 // Pacific 1 // China 2 // [5-3]

Bold text indicate the winning region

Bump

Makes you think that when Riot wants to do a Champions event for the Mobile version

Indonesia has to be on the top of their choices for sure (and yes, I'm sure they are doing one, even if they dont Tencent will probably push it anyway)

real

Short answer: Tencent

people can't take the real reason then

Them getting to scrim with all the top teams is really vital there. That helps minimize the year gap they had noticeably

It's like if CN were playing CrossFire here instead.

Chinese site use heat index that is taken into account the chat activity and several more stuff, its not 100% viewership but a nice indication

for example, Huya's main stream is around 4M heat with several more Watchparties in that area. a Mid to bottom pack LPL match will be around this level of heat

Basic takeaway is: They're doing good, not in a dead viewership territory at all

agree, 2025 gonna be fun

If they can start to overcome the 3 year competitive gap in PC Version that now all 4 are being balanced

imagine how ahead they would be when Mobile gets tournament, where they've been playtesting the game for years ahead of everyone else

^ This, and In fact what I wanted to see too

CF has an incredibly stagnant pool of talent due to barely 0 T2 commitment vs CNVAL NatComp

(to think this is just the PC Version that they've been several years behind before they get a server, I don't wanna imagine how strong they would be on the Mobile version where they are the ones who've been playtesting more than anyone else, Its also where CFM talent growth is stale as well)

Tencent annually hosted Esports Summit every year, in 2024 they had reworked the format of old 2-day offline summit into a Simplified live broadcast instead

6 Games are confirmed to have "New Esports Plan updates" to be mentioned on stream, VALORANT are said to be one of these. While the showcase is expected to be focused on the Chinese region, since last year Tencent had promoted this event and streamed in English platforms and so does this year

Event is 19:30 China time June 24th

Yeah, ASC teams can went from

Top 8 >> Goes to Ascension >> not winning Ascension > drops to Chall

Not Top 8 >> Chall directly

next year, so if BLEED not finished Top 8 in Stage 2 2025 = they go back to Challengers for 2026 for example

Note : If both ASC team goes to Champions, the one with better placement stays, the other plays Ascension
Note 2 : "TOP 8" refers to Stage 2 of each league starting in 2025

1. • 1 ASC team stays by reaching Champions
   • 1 ASC goes down to Ascension and fails to win the spot
   • 1 CL team goes up

---------------------------------------------------

2. • 1 ASC team stays by reaching Champions
   • 1 ASC goes down to Ascension and but wins the spot
   • No CL teams goes up at all

---------------------------------------------------

3. • 2 ASC team hits Top 8 but not qualified to Champions, so both plays in Ascension
   • either 0/1/2 ASC teams wins the spot (so another case where no CL teams can go up)

---------------------------------------------------

4. • 2 ASC team drops to CL by not reaching Top 8
   • 2 CL teams guaranteed going up

---------------------------------------------------
Imagine teams try hard the whole year and no one were good enough to ascended

WeChat account for VAL Mobile has been created how fast the rest of the world getting the game can be dictated by just how quick they are getting it out for China, which wont' have to wait a few years like PC this time, they are a Day 1 region

In fact they've been playtesting before anyone else as well

as for the name, They are simply named it just "VALORANT Mobile Game" similar to how Wild Rift was renamed to "LoL Mobile Game" in China instead.

China's imported games approval list dropped today

VALORANT: Operation Primal has been listed in Entry 13, with "Mobile" as the category.

probably the reason game has never been announced at all is this, They wait for the China approval so that China could get the game Day 1

CrossFire, last year's PC Cafe heat index had them decimate even both CS+VAL heat combined

despite being a Korean game, CrossFire basically become China's National game already due to the localisation and many efforts made to represent the Chinese culture in the game

Power of the most popular in China (CrossFire) strikes again

Yeah, viewers knew who're playing
only the streamer just cant explicitly say or publicly acknowledging its GenG thats playing

not sure about VOD but probably someone uploads it on Bilibili anyway

For context

remember the GenG/Taiwan controversy? this led to few things

• LCK permanently loses the Chinese cast
• During VCT Madrid, the main stream in chinese platform skips broadcast of every GenG match and replaced by rerun. the CN Twitch stream is unaffected
• Any costreamers doing GenG matches during that had to avoid labelling "GenG" properly in stream name, including having any picture or anything to blurred over anything that screams GenG, most notably the team name at the score counter on top

This goes back even further to the NewJeans rule during Worlds 2023 where Tencent showed NewJeans performance without having proper permission first. This is partially why many CN league went offstream or had a delayed broadcast for quite some time after that, now they had to be even stricter on getting permission just to make sure they could stream Korean matches without consequences

The most of tournament is at the current VCT CN Arena, then the last three day they moved to an unknown venue in China, probably a Stadium somewhere

Note that CN Bundles will have only Skins and Charms

there are no Spray and Cards for CN this years

has it been confirmed they'll be hosted there?

Thats a possibility, considering announcing it in Korea will likely had better crowd reception compared to USA (which is considered the most unfriendly region when it comes to that, heck even if this gets announced in Turkey it might recieved even better considering they are quite into Mobile)

At the same time I think they could be announcing it earlier, be it during their upcoming Anniversary or something

Regardless of APAC winning or not it is already something we wanted to see for so long

we have never seen these in a global title of the same gameplay type as VAL (eg R6/CS) before, the last time it happened was 1.6 days

has Masters watch party sitting in the category with highest heat index lol

Its kinda obvious yeah, I guess people worried if they actually going for it (given games like Fortnite actually can do that before)

a new set of strings of "CrossPlayPool" was found today

Which now contains only three separate crossplay pool, each wont matched themselves to another platform

Mobile: iOS / Android
Desktop: Windows / Linux / Mac
Console: PS / XBOX / Switch

Mobile ver. is still in development with one by Tencent for CN version the other by Riot's Console team for globally

Which is good they dont do crossplay, Cross progress is ok

Looks like a fun finals, wonder why ence had a polish team

Most simple answer: Tencent and theres really not much excuse you could counter with when tackled Mainland conglomerates

its just Tencent, simple.

The other way is everyone also gets 4 for fairness (say, if China never has its own league and bundled into APAC, you have option of either kill SEA just like Valve did with 2016-2017 CS or have China stuck in CrossFire that is a game from 15+ years ago (no, CS is not the majority in China) forever

The long term is that I believe China would be a scary region for the other version of VALORANT that currently is in testing, and its not the one with controller
but as for the current term is simply: Tencent, China as a whole & its Marketing/Business approach

Funny take: Could said the same with things like PCS (idc about my region not playing league), LCS

This match somehow makes Huya's heat index for VCT CN very close to CrossFire with their most popular team playing at the same time, that ironically being "AG"

(only 1 M heat behind, so around like 60-100K Viewers behind)

VCT CN doing things I guess, Perfect World would never

For starters, in LPL several organizations contains a sponsored branding slide into their team name. For example Bilibili Gaming in LPL were appended with PingAn Bank after their name, and is only seen in LPL and not in any other game they have a team (not even their VCT team)

JDG seems to have one for their VCT just today: as JingDong Mall JDG Esports instead of just JDG.
JingDong here being an e-Commerce and the company that owns the team, so they put themselves as sponsored team name lol

Seems to be just now

Due to "Production Cycle" and other reasons, the CN Capsules will have only the Gun Buddy and Classic skins

OP Note: "Standard" is how they called Classic in China version

Some other key noteworthy info

• CN Partner teams werent locked until like Late 2023 hence we know it so late into 2023
• Even for the other 3 leagues the CN server is delayed and will be out with next patch (March 6)
• The capsules will be leaving the store (unpurchasable) after Champions

Per the official article only the "Standard Equipment" and "Charms" are included