VALORANT player discovers method to manipulate econ rating

While frugal VALORANT players are rewarded with higher econ ratings, one fan figured out how to trick the system.

A VALORANT player uncovered a trick to make it seem like your econ rating is a lot higher than it actually is, posting the method last night.

Essentially, players need to have a teammate request a gun. After you purchase your ally the weapon, they drop it on the ground and leave it there for you. Immediately after the round starts, you can pick up the dropped weapon and play as normal.

“From what I can tell, this works because the game thinks you bought a gun for a friend so it registers the money as being spent by the friend since it thinks it is their gun,” the player theorizes. “When the round starts it basically takes a snapshot of your load-out and says that is how much you spent.”

Since your loadout would be a simple pistol when the supposed “snapshot” happens, picking up the dropped weapon won’t affect your econ rating.

The player was able to get their econ rating over 2,500 using this method in a custom game with friends. In a public match, the player hit 217 while the next person hovered at 67.

The impact of this method is up for debate, however. If achieving a higher econ rating affects how much you rank up, then this feature could adversely affect matchmaking. But if the determiner of your performance is strictly on combat score and KDA, then an inflated econ rating would do nothing for your rank.

If Riot catches wind of this bug, the dev team will likely remove it in a future patch.