Riot is bringing its tactical shooter Valorant to mobile devices. There aren’t a lot of details yet — such as when it will launch, on what hardware, or how it will differ from the main game — but Riot says the new version will simply be called Valorant Mobile.
The developer claims that the PC version of the game, which launched last year, currently averages 14 million monthly players. Valorant is also coming off of its biggest competitive tournament to date, with an event in Iceland, and Riot says that more than 1 million concurrent viewers tuned in to the finals on May 31st.
The news shouldn’t be too surprising. Earlier this year, Riot made a similar move with League of Legends, launching a mobile-focused spinoff called Wild Rift. Meanwhile, some of the most popular shooters in the world have moved to smartphones as well; PUBG Mobile and Call of Duty Mobile are both huge hits, and a smartphone iteration of Apex Legends is also on the way.
It also sounds like Riot is looking to build out Valorant in other ways. Without getting into details, aside from the mobile version, the developer says that it is “preparing to expand the franchise in order to bring Valorant to more players around the world.” Again, this would be following the League of Legends playbook, which currently has expanded into everything from comic books to digital card games to an upcoming animated series on Netflix.
