Riot Games has announced that Valorant is to get its own PBE test server for future updates in 2021.
Valorant has launched without a test server, and the likes of Act III's Icebox must go through a live server beta phase, with Agents like Skye being internally tested for longer.
The plans for a PBE mean that players will be able to beta test content appropriately, and not have to deal with the risk of having bugs enter the live servers.
PBE Comes To Valorant
A PBE (Public Beta Environment) test server hosts a test build for planned live patches.
Riot Games has used PBE servers for a long time, with the likes of League of Legends getting test builds all the time for balance changes, skins, new Champions and more.
The future Valorant PBE will operate in the same way, meaning players can download a separate client to test pre-release build candidates and address bugs and balance changes on that client.
Riot Games Senior Release Manager, Corrie Hardin said that the PBE is targeted for an early 2021 release date.
The new client will see the way that Valorant content is published. The likes of Icebox released on the live version of Valorant in a two-week beta phase, with the official release slated for patch 1.11 on October 27.
Over the last few weeks, Valorant has had players test the feature on live servers, resulting in Icebox getting a hotfix to stop an Omen teleport bug from ruining Icebox.
Examples such as this will be isolated during the PBE client and will not appear in the live servers in the future.
Riot has stated that Valorant is getting plenty of significant updates for episode 2, set for 2021. The likes of ranked leaderboards, lobby warmups, pause features and more are coming to the game.
Riot’s investment in the stability and Valorant is going to ensure its growth and quality improvement as a top game.
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