btw if we Asian have won the last three
what would happen when the mobile version gets its own tournament series? (Tencent would love to push for one anyway)

The crossfire vibes (even better) that I wanted to see

Thai fans eating well

indirectly but it does help a lot with LoL's recent marketing restart over the years, so their LoL team affects all the way to the VALORANT side locally here

incl. China numbers - Most watched masters according to Leo

So thats around 3.7M from Chinese platforms alone

while Chinese platforms uses Heat Index which factors in chat activities and giveaways on their platforms,
Companies such as Tencent/Valve can gain access to direct raw traffic numbers (which isnt used publicly by Chinese platforms)

not CN but someone following the scene often, PUBG and DOTA cause are due to declining growth in the game, PUBG has yet to get approval meant orgs cant invest much while in DOTA2 well LoL and HoK eclipsed them in every aspect

the U18 rule does affect a bit where in the past teams like to stack U18 players as academies but they seem to adapt from it fine

Last year a Viral News makes massive headlines here, you may have recognized in the past of this picture featuring a Korean Tekken player inhaling a Thai Herbal Inhaler called Hong Thai before playing a match

Much later today Riot took a step further out of that and reveals a collab with the Inhaler brand itself
wrapped in a VALORANT V25 branding, you can actually bought it at the Venue until the tournament ends.

It is, many of us here had issues on getting to optimal english (well, its not main language too) so yeah

Some wording in english may need a bit of rearrangement to get the full context in thai

thats kpop-influenced crowd for you
this is fine
its you problem

People are hungry for these kind of events, Thai has really never got a Host of a Major Global Tournament of a Major Esports title in this scsale ever since, The closest they are is always the Mobile or Korean F2P games

only the ESL ONE Bangkok that breaks this drought then Masters

I had 2 puppy and a kitten to take care of too

it's 2/5AM USA atm

My eyes are not deceiving
ok its just HUD

Probably, I think the game will announced sometime this year, people speculate it could be during the game anniversary month in June

in June 2024, I discovered that Tencent/Riot China has created a WeChat official account for VALORANT Mobile in secret

Exactly Today, they quietly deactivates the old account and create a new one instead. Which is the first time there's been any sort of official movement of VALORANT Mobile in a pretty long while since the beta at the end of 2024, theres been radio silent since

According to their linkedIn because it hasnt been posted elsewhere yet, 3 year partnership which meant all Three games (League TFT VAL) are guaranteed to return at the 2026 and 27 EWC as well

🏆 The three-year partnership with Riot Games will bring three of the world’s most influential games to the Esports World Cup for the next three years.

but also this part

In addition, the agreement includes a global commercial partnership between EWCF and LOL Esports, the VALORANT Champions Tour (VCT), and the TFT 2025 competitive circuit. Kicking off at VCT Masters Bangkok on February 20, 2025, the collaboration will feature EWC in-broadcast activations at LoL Esports, VCT, and TFT global LAN events.

VALORANT, LoL and TFT all got announced at the same time

Format isn't announced, but for LoL last year they invited Top 2 of each league, while TFT runs as a Team Format instead

Three of the five remaining games have a countdown 1 hour from this post at 20:30 EU all ended at the same time , at this point none of Riot titles had been announced yet

Funnily enough they could land a jersey deals in future tho (given some of other Chinese league out there had Puma sponsors)

Citing the team got almost no support from Riot and the complicated pathway into the International Leagues literally only Full sense remaining at this point

Yeah that is the elephant in the room here, EWC entirely run during July-August which immediately overlaps with Split 2
unless they find a way to cramp those in

In one of the countdown's on the Saudi EWC website they had two countdowns sitting one hour next to each other, this double countdown has happened before only once with Mobile Legends having 2 events announced next to each other.

There's been apparently a leaked slide on Chinese forum that indicates 2 VALORANT entries in EWC (one normal and one GC) however it's accuracy is unclear

Since the CN API is a different one run domestically, its why both VLR (and LP) were unable to do the same depths as the usual matches. As there hasn't been a way to reach out for access of these easily (I'd assume domestic sites is easier to approach, hence the existence of Haojiao)

In the Top 10 most played games in CN net cafes, which is the first time ever CrossFire is beaten by a game of the same kind, CS managed only once in 1.6 and never again

a Draft of all sports discipline to be ran at 2025 SEA Games in Thailand next December had just come out

within the Esports section (33) theres a slot for a "FPS/TPS game" which isnt revealed yet which game they are picking.

Citing the lack of recent performance, they chose to drop out of Split 3 and rebuild for 2025

Now that's 3/4? Teams that dropped out of the additional Split 3, Several in TH due to they prefer an off//season event and this one due to poor results

To start with, SOOP is formerly AfreecaTV, the whole company decides to rebrand themselves order to take the global market

They do this by gutting the multilingual service for old AfreecaTV and creating an entirely new website with nothing carrying over since June 12th so this site is up for already Four Months

BUT they didnt do that for the Korean Version site. They just rename the old AfreecaTV site and keep everything intact so creators dont need to start building everything new, followers etc etc lol

so Global had to start fresh from 0
KR just changing name

It is the "East Asia Tri Cup" that was mentioned in the OFFSEASON announcement so this is the other offseason events for CN

a Special 8 China & Pacific Off-Season event called Asia Invitational

8 China and Pacific at Chengdu's Quantum Esports Center, the venue previously held an international PUBGM tournament featuring China, Mongolia and SEA Teams

Edit: At least EDG TE PRX will be there + 5

There's a way: Host in Thailand
but have production team from Indonesian work cross-country

cuz that's what happen with ASC last year, held in Thailand
but didnt hired any Thai Prod. House to work for it.
Thailand is there just to host but they hired someone from another country to do it

That's the reason behind what happens in Day 1

This map possibly a wake up call that we're only good in Mobile Games and FIFA

a lot of Obscure Asian-F2P shooters in the Mid 2000s where only just Asia competing, basically around the CrossFire era Korea made so many Shooters in a similar aspect

for example games like Special Force (Soldier Front), SF2 (SKILL), Point Blank (Project Blackout) and also CrossFire (CF is a korean dev game,not chinese) alongside things like movement-based games such as GunZ, S4 League and of course CS-Online. (Special shoutout to A.V.A.)

but to be specific in the Tac FPS area, Korea is all about one single game Sudden Attack released in 2005 and it's just few years ago where VALORANT finally beat them in PC Cafe numbers, the game hangs onto Top 10 all these years

and then of course you have Overwatch as well as the standard CS and PUBG games

To commemorate EDG's World Champion win, exclusive to Chinese Server a bundle of returning skins to be sold on CN Server handpicked by each of the EDG player

The process goes that each player designated 1 group of weapon types, each player nominates 2 skins of that group and then Everyone in China Servers with at least LV20 game account has to vote to determine which one

This is the results of the EDG Bundle

Riot had a series of event in relation with the College Basketball league, including around 100 College & Universities where Riot CN hosted a event that unifies College Basketball and VALORANT into a single event

There will be a separate influencer event at Optics Valley Center where VCT Pros, Streamers and Basketball players compete in a series of 5v5 and 1v1 matches, and KennyS being in the 1v1 matchdays lol

The increasingly hostile ecosystem has simply made it untenable to responsibly run a team (part of the announcement text)

a New public beta starts today and with NDA lifted for the first time meant users can now make contents and stream it

Several Huya/Douyu streamers now start streaming the public beta and here's a look at the party screen

Huya has already created a game section for VALM: https://www.huya.com/g/62639

Servers will be opened in China on 9AM local September 12 and will be up all day until the end of the test

On top of the NDA being lifted starting the same day so those with access can start sharing content and streaming it. Tencent went from not even mentioning VALORANT during the Beta, kept the game in secrecy for years and then turned into full-on public test within 2 weeks

There were some EDG LoL players saying on stream (maybe he's joking) that Riot might not run Esports but that could be because they're totally bad at Mobile esports (exhibit A: Wild Rift)

and they could let Tencent do things on their own (Tencent had even esports for their own Fall Guys Clone with a 60y old Grandma competing in China, competitive VALM will be absolutely normal day for Tencent)

I could see Riot just hand over to Tencent to do Mobile for them. They werent experience in both sides anyway so they would just Ditch Console and then have Tencent do Mobile for them winwin

^

I think the chunk of NA/EMEA will be there but not a lot, NA will most likely be an overlap with the Pro CODM audience while in EU Countries the ones that really "with open arms" on mobile esports are just a selected variety of Spain, Turkey, MENA and the CIS. Less about things like WEU/The UK/France/DACH etc etc

Some of the smaller orgs in China start posting recruitment for players to their VALORANT Mobile division

This is a very common practice in China Specially if it's a Riot or Tencent title and ESPECIALLY if the game already got approval from the govt. Back when VALORANT PC got the China Approval in December 2022 we've seen significant increase in Orgs posting recruitment right after that. This is no different

Right now only All Gamers being the VCT CN team that have been spotted recruiting players. But TBH every single team in VCT CN except TYLOO already have a Mobile Division in other Riot/Tencent titles in China (CrossFire, PUBG, HoK, Wild Rift) so its not too surprising

There are also possibilities of a Major National Championship for VALM in China during the middle of 2025 as well

there still mentions of "EpicGames" within the package name for VALM Beta Test tho

Worth noting the player card seems like a condensed VCT setup

They had it in a playable alpha test last week, which will re-open again around Mid September

Additionally the VALORANT Mobile Companion app now opens additional signups for the beta as well without any extra requirements outside playing the CN server for at least 1hr

No because I'm currently signed with Liquipedia/TL

I actually do more mobile contents at my twitter of the same name

no sus can confirm

After the previous test that I posted earlier, apparently the test already ended earlier today

Then this website surfaced, revealing the codename "Code Alpha Test" which will be an Alpha test with File Deletion. This also marks the first time any sort of official website name for VALORANT Mobile had surfaced with the Chinese Sv. site name being valm.qq.com

In all of previous test for VALORANT Mobile, Tencent actually not saying the name of the game directly but always called it as PROJECT C (just like A being VALORANT PC, and L being the LoL Fighting game, C is VAL Mobile)

Key takeaway is Tencent went from a private test and avoiding mentioning the actual name of the game
to putting up a website for signup meant the game is really close to getting at least some public reveal.

The Website (doesnt work on PC, unless you make the window small) : https://valm.qq.com/act/a20240814recruit/index.html

I found my comrades, Broke Gang W

Here's a quick look at the main menu of the Mobile Version

The upcoming CN server test starts later tonight with users who signed up can download the game from their Tencent app

CN seemingly having a unique name of the game. It's currently being called as "VALORANT: Operation Energy/Operation Primal" instead of just VALORANT Mobile

while the website itself was also discovered with a short name valm - https://valm.qq.com (site currently 403 forbidden)

As part of EDG's celebration, the Chinese server will provided a Special Bundle that allows a select set of skins curated by all EDG Players to be sold again on the CN Server

Today they've revealed the whole process including allowing the Fans in CN Server to help voting for them, here's how it worked

Only skins that released in CN Server between 7/12/2023 to 8/31/2024

• Each player picks 2 skins from each group (Sidearms, SMG/Shotgun, Guardian/Bulldog, Phantom/Vandal and Sniper/MG) to enter FAN VOTE STAGE

• All players in CN server with Level 20 or above can take part in the event page, and Vote which one of the selected two in each group to be included in the bundle

• At total, the most voted from each group + a Specially selected set by the MVP forms EDG Return Gift Pack that can be bought separately or full set on discount - Only for the CN Servers

• Pack goes live with E9A3, they cited no regions have done this before so the process will take time.