Riot Games will add a VALORANT test environment, known as the Public Beta Environment (PBE), to a limited number of North American accounts starting on July 9, the publisher announced today.
On the PBE, approved VALORANT players will be able to test parts of early builds for upcoming patches. Riot already does this for League of Legends and will implement a similar system to VALORANT more than a year after the game launched.
“Our bi-weekly patch cadence could use some extra help to identify bugs and evaluate stability before we lockdown what stays and goes into our patches,” Riot said on VALORANT’s official website. “This includes Agent and weapon balance, game systems, competitive, and the other updates that are usually captured in our Patch Notes.
“Emphasis here on IDENTIFYING BUGS. This will be for testing features that are just about ready to ship and need a final pass to catch issues. We will not be using this for feedback on things super early in development, or just for feedback in general. This is important to keep in mind since access to the PBE is limited and will not be representative of our global audience.”
The VALORANT PBE will be “selectively available,” meaning that it’ll be open over one weekend before each new patch, thus two weekends prior to the normal Tuesday live date. During this time frame, North American accounts can join the PBE, test proposed changes, and mention bugs on the dedicated VALORANT PBE subreddit.
Once the PBE is live, there will be a mega thread available on the subreddit, which will be the default place to engage in all things related to the VALORANT PBE test.
Players can apply to join the PBE using Riot’s sign-up page. Once you enter using your VALORANT account, you should receive a response in your inbox with more instructions on how to download it.
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