Valorant devs warn against “alt-tabbing” in-game as new glitch emerges

Valorant devs have warned against “alt-tabbing” in-game after a new glitch that leads to significant lag and FPS drops has emerged. Riot are investigating the issue tied to the game’s netcode to work on a fix.

Alt-tabbing between windows is like second nature. While you’re loading into game you can be messaging friends, changing your music, or scrolling social media.

However, that could be having a direct effect on your Valorant performance. A clip from Reddit user ‘QuillnLegend’ has highlighted how alt-tabbing between Valorant and other windows causes a significant ping increase, adding almost 150ms. For a precision shooter, this is a death sentence.

The glitch has puzzled both players and Riot, who are digging into the issue and warning players to avoid alt-tabbing if they can.

“We’re currently investigating and trying to understand the general issues everyone’s been feeling around inconsistency in game feel from game to game,” developer ‘mochimisu’ said on Reddit.

The lag spike glitch isn’t the only thing affecting players who alt-tab back into the game. Some players have noted Nvidia driver issues have caused major FPS drops after minimizing and reopening the game.

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While there’s an expectation the game will take a few seconds to adjust after being brought back into focus, the sustained performance issues are a problem.

“Alt-tab as a trigger is something that jogs a few gears in our brains in potential causes, including a couple that we were already going to investigate, but helps in attributing a direct cause, and is a potential explanation for how netcode feel can just simply vary game to game,” mochimisu explained.

Riot Games

Don’t go hitting alt-tab in Valorant if you can avoid it.

“We’re still going to investigate other potential causes, but this has me a bit more hopeful in that we’re going to be able to find the crux of the issue and address it more quickly, now that we have a way to potentially trigger it.”

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Riot are working on a fix as quickly as possible, but “don’t have anything concrete to share yet.” We will update you when a fix is shipped.