Riot removes Act Rank Badges from VALORANT to investigate hitching issue

VALORANT players are still encountering stuttering issues in their matches despite Riot Games releasing a fix for one of the sources of the problem in Patch 1.11. And now, Riot has removed Act Rank Badges, which might be a source of the hitching issue. 

Players have reported a hitching issue that seems to occur randomly throughout matches. Some players experience it while in gunfights, but others experience the micro-stuttering while standing still or alone. 

Patch 1.11 included a fix for one source of the hitching issue and Riot reassured players that it’d continue to work on the problem. But the Act Rank Badges might be one of the sources of the bug, so the feature will be removed until the issue is resolved. 

Act Rank Badges allow players to show off their progress throughout the season and show other players their progress in each Act. The badges appear on each person’s player card, which can be seen while loading into a ranked match. 

This feature will be removed for the foreseeable future to help game performance. Riot didn’t confirm that the badges were a cause for the hitching issue, but it’s investigating their impact. 

VALORANT players won’t be able to show off their Act Badges for the time being, but this is a small price to pay if it removes the hitching issue. Riot also jokingly said players can now claim they were Radiant in Act II since no one can prove otherwise.