Riot announce new Valorant mode Swiftplay will stay permanently

Riot Games has announced that the Valorant mode Swiftplay will end its beta period will be a permanent fixture of the game come Patch 6.03.

Valorant’s short round-based game mode is going to stay in the rotation, according to a Riot announcement. Swiftplay was introduced as an alternative to Unrated and Spike Rush as a short version of Unrated that players could jump in and out of in 15 minutes or less.

Riot announced the mode on December 6, 2022, and it was introduced into the game as a beta mode in January 2023 in Patch 5.12. The mode is five vs five, and plays exactly as Unrated with a few tweaks to the economy so players can fully buy by the third round. The first team to win five rounds win the match.

Swiftplay is here to stay in Valorant

Riot also said in its announcement that the mode might still see changes despite removing the beta moniker.

“Like anything else in our game, the team is going to continue to look for opportunities to improve the mode,” Cloeman Palm, Product Manager of Gameplay on Valorant, said in the announcement.

Changes to the mode could mean tweaks to how credits are distributed for each round, the ultimate economy for the mode, or how many rounds it takes to win.

Palm also said that more details will come in the actual patch notes for Valorant. Valorant Patch 6.03 is set to come out on February 14 as the game gets back on its regular two-week patch cycle. The recent Valorant patch, 6.02, dropped on February 2.

Valorant players have taken a liking to Swiftplay for its brevity and its lack of game-breaking power-ups like what is found in the game’s other staple mode, Spike Rush. Fans will get to see what the mode looks like outside of beta, and what the patch notes say, on February 14.