by Cody Perez in Valorant | Oct, 7th 2021
Valorant is an extremely popular first-person shooter from Riot Games, the developer of League of Legends, that has proven that the studio can do so much more outside of just the MOBA space. With the game’s announcement coming to mobile, here’s how to download Valorant mobile right now.
Valorant Is Coming to Mobile Someday
Riot Games announced earlier in 2021that players will someday play Valorant on a brand new platform. One of the biggest issues with the immensely popular title is that it is only available for PC, which is a travesty for such a good first-person shooter.
After all, FPS games have long since thrived on other platforms, like console and mobile, so it would be a shame to stay on there forever. Fortunately, Riot Games has revealed that it will come to other platforms someday, but, interestingly enough, the first place will not be consoles.
Though FPS games work wonders on consoles and are expected to be there for major ones these days, that is not going to happen for quite some time, if ever at all. Instead, the first place where Riot will be releasing Valorant other than PC is on Android and iOS mobile devices.
The studio believes that the game and the abilities that make up the FPS title are best suited to mobile gameplay, where you can quickly tap the screen to use an ability in battle. It is not super surprising that this is the case, either, since Riot has already shown that it is more favorable of mobile than consoles already.
This was shown because we got League of Legends on mobile long before it could come to any console platform. The studio has been promoting Android and iOS as the place to play its games other than PC, where they originate from.
What is intriguing about the Valorant Mobile situation is that this game, in particular, is a shooter rather than a MOBA that has been proven repeatedly to work wonders on touchscreen. On the other hand, FPS games do work on mobile but are best with auto-shooting mechanics.
This is the case for games like Call of Duty Mobile and others where you have auto-shooting for when you are aiming at someone else, with the option for manual if you’d prefer, and then that frees your fingers up to do other tasks like reload, use abilities, and so on.
This format would make the most sense for Valorant as it would allow the shooting to happen when you see someone, freeing you up to use your abilities at will. This will fundamentally change the game, though, which is likely why there will be no cross-play from what we can tell between Valorant Mobile and its PC predecessor.
Valorant Mobile Release Date
Of course, you might be wondering what the Valorant Mobile release is, and, unfortunately, we do not have an answer at this time. The game will not be releasing on Android and iOS in the current year of 2021; that is the least that we know about the situation.
From what we have heard, Riot Games aims to release it on mobile stores sometime in 2022, likely in the middle of the year or even later, depending on how the development goes. More than likely, though, we will see its release sometime next year.
That said, there is the chance that it could be released in 2023, which would be unfortunate as that could be a long time to wait for this mobile port of the game, but there is still the chance. Challenges are involved even though this is a port of an existing game rather than a brand new title.
It is not as simple as adding touchscreen controls that trigger aiming down the sights, using various abilities and gameplay mechanics. Those are relatively simple to do, but the problem is that the game has been downsized to work on mobile platforms.
Given that mobile devices do not have the horsepower of a PC, this means that Riot Games is essentially working with some heavy constraints on its shoulders. Even with the advancement of hardware and graphics power on mobile every year, the platform is so widespread that you kind of need to account for a wide variety of users.
That is likely the reason why we do not have a firm release date at this time and why it is likely that we will have to wait some time to get one, too. With all of that said, though, the situation is not completely grim as there is the fact that we will, hopefully, see the game in some form next year.
There Will Likely Be a Beta Beforehand
Perhaps the most hopeful part of the situation is not just that we will likely get a Valorant Mobile release date next year. If it is pushed to 2023 for whatever reason, there is a high chance that some users will be able to play the game ahead of time.
After all, we are in the age of closed betas and alphas where some users worldwide can get in and check out the game early to provide feedback and valuable insight into what is going on with it. This is something that we would not be surprised about happening at all with this game.
Not only are mobile betas pretty popular before a game launches, but Valorant itself had a pretty popular and strangely implemented beta where players could earn codes to check out the game early before it was released for everyone for free on PC.
Given Riot Games’ track record of doing this, there is a high chance that we could see a similar situation happen for Valorant Mobile. As for how to download Valorant mobile beta, that is something that we will have to wait and see about for now.
There is the slim chance that we could see a closed alpha or something by the end of 2021, but we honestly doubt it. Even if the game does hit its 2022 release window around the middle of next year, we would not expect a closed beta until the beginning of next year at the earliest.
More than likely, it would just happen a couple or a few months before the game releases for everyone, so there is the chance that it could even be later in 2022, depending on if the game is delayed or not. Regardless, there is a high chance that some players will at least get their hands on it in 2022.
How to Download Valorant Mobile Right Now
But a whole year is a long time to wait to, maybe, get to play Valorant on mobile. As such, we have come up with a short-term solution for you that will let you be able to play the game early and, better yet, on the mobile platform that you would like to.
You see, we know how to download Valorant mobile right now and play the game on your mobile device without having to wait for the official version to come out someday. It has to do with playing the official PC version of the game but on your mobile platform.
You can do that right now through the power of the various PC streaming services connecting to mobile and enjoying the game ahead of its mobile launch. This is not the optimal solution since you will have to deal with keyboard and mouse controls on mobile, but it is there regardless.
This is the one way to download Valorant mobile and play it right now, even though Riot Games has not released the game on mobile. This is a solution that we have used for other games that could not be played on mobile anymore,like the controversial Fortnite situation, for instance.
But the best part about this particular situation is that you can know how to download Valorant mobile on both Android and iOS. Both platforms have options for playing Valorant on them, and so it is just up to whether or not you want to go through the loops to make it happen.
Android Options
First and foremost, when it comes to how to download Valorant mobile, we will start with the Android side of things. On Android, there are plenty of options available to you, some of which are a little less safe given the openness of the platform.
We will stick to only the official routes that we know and trust for doing this purpose, but keep in mind that there are plenty of other possibilities out there for Android users outside of these. For starters, there is the method of simply streaming games from your PC to Android phone or tablet.
This lets your computer do all of the work for you and then have your phone stream the gameplay that you do there. There are options like Steam Link that you can use for this that connects directly to your Steam library, but there are others beyond that as well.
You can opt to use something like Rainway, a streaming service that is very similar to Steam Link and even Nvidia GeForce Now, but it is free to use at this time, unlike the latter. But the problem here is that you need the PC hardware to make this happen.
That can defeat the whole purpose of playing the game on mobile for some users who may not have a PC capable of playing Valorant or want to stream directly from there. In this case, you need dedicated streaming services that let you play from the available cloud machines.
Services like Nvidia GeForce Now allow you to do this, but when writing this post, Valorant is not one of the games available on the service. As such, the only option that we can recommend for this aspect is the Shadow streaming service available on Android.
iOS Options
On the iOS side of the equation, you have a notably less open system than what Android users can do. So, that essentially means that you are much more limited in terms of the options you have at your disposal for how to download Valorant mobile right now.
Thankfully, though, the aforementioned options are also available to iOS users on both iPhone and iPad. You can stream directly from your PC using both Steam Link and Rainway, letting you freely play Valorant and a bunch of other games on mobile easily.
But if you want to stream from the cloud, the only main option available to you, like Android, is Shadow. I have praised Shadow on here before because it does the unbelievable task of letting you stream an actual PC to your mobile device.
When I say an actual PC, I mean it. It is a PC that you are streaming over the cloud to your mobile device. You can use it just as you would any other PC. You can download Steam, Battle.net, Epic Games Store, and all of the other PC stores on there.
You can play around with emulators, do your school or work there, and so on. I have even worked for this site using Shadow on my iPad in the past when in the middle of traveling. Since it is just an entire PC that you are streaming to your device, this, of course, means that you can download and play Valorant on there.
Fortunately, there are solutions, too, with companies selling keyboards and mouses built for mobile, so you can have a miniature gaming PC in the palms of your hands. The best part about it all is that Shadow works quite well, making it a solid option.
However, the one downside to this whole situation is that Shadow costs a lot of money to use. It used to be in the $10 to $15 range per month to use, which is quite reasonable given how much and how often I would buy gaming laptops in the past.
However, it increased in price, starting at around $30 a month to use, which is more than double what I was paying for. I understand price increases, but this one is insane. I stopped using it once that change went into effect since it is no longer saving me money, personally. This is something to keep in mind as it is a very expensive solution that used to be easy to recommend, but not any longer.
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Cody Perez - Author
Cody is a writer for EsportsTalk who loves everything video games and anime. When he isn’t previewing the next big event for Fortnite or Call of Duty, he can be found reviewing anime, video games, or just crafting away in Final Fantasy XIV, waiting impatiently for the next expansion or patch to drop.
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