Unfortunately, Valorant’s next update and its preliminary PBE 6.2 have been delayed until early February. This was first announced on Valorant’s official Reddit page for public beta communities, but the reason was not shared. This led to further speculation, which Riot Games chose to quell with a follow-up announcement.
On January 20, Riot Games publicly disclosed details of a concerning social engineering attack on their systems to the development community. As the creators of successful IPs like Valorant and League of Legends, Riot Games undoubtedly has to deal with major concerns regarding a possible data leak and other related issues.
Riot Games officially states that a cyber attack delayed Valorant’s upcoming 6.2 update
While the developers have yet to find more answers, they have announced that they have found no indication of a compromise of player data or personal information, which is a huge relief for now.
Unsurprisingly, the attack is temporarily preventing Riot Games from releasing new content to their games, resulting in an inevitable delay in Valorant’s update 6.2 and League of Legends’ update 13.2. The delay will also lead to an imminent shift in Riot Games’ schedule for patch updates across its video game titles.
In a tweet dated January 20 (PT), Riot Games stated:
“While our teams are working hard on a fix, we expect this to impact our upcoming patch cadence across multiple games.”
According to the official Valorant Reddit page, the next PBE is currently scheduled for February 3rd. This may be a possible estimate of how much time the developers may require to address this issue. However, the PBE is likely to be pushed further, assuming the investigation requires effort beyond the estimate.
Social engineering is a common term in the cyber security world and greatly affects internet users worldwide. Essentially, it is a manipulation technique used by perpetrators to take advantage of common human behavior and gain private information or access to sensitive systems.
Fortunately, Riot Games was able to contain the attack on their system and has potentially stopped any kind of compromise of user data from occurring. However, the team continues to look into the issue and has asked users to be patient. Fans will receive additional updates as the investigation progresses.
Valorant’s patch 6.2 is expected to bring major bug fixes for certain agents, as well as the new in-game map, Lotus. It may also contain significant agent or map changes based on community feedback since the release of Episode 6.
Currently, various bugs with Agent’s abilities have plagued players, negatively affecting the overall competitive experience of the tactical shooter. Riot Games is expected to address these concerns sooner or later, and patch 6.2 is not an unreasonable timeframe to expect corrective action.
