In an official tweet, Riot games teased their next Valorant agent from India joining the line-up earlier today. Rumours were spreading earlier about the next agent after Riot on 5 October tweeted, “Jald he milte hai,” meaning see you soon, and now they have confirmed that the new agent will be from India.
The tweet showed a teaser video with two of the current agents in the game, Astra and Killjoy searching for a new agent, which led them to India. The new agent is called Mage and will be one of the controllers.
Controller class in Valorant are those with utilities to block visions and help their team to hold control of an area by blocking visions from others, hence the name controllers. Their job is to ensure your teammates do not get killed from different angles.
The skills and abilities of the agent have not been revealed yet, but the agent’s name will be Varun Batra, another rumor suggests. We have already seen some Indian characters in other video games like Kali in Rainbow Six Siege, owned by Ubisoft, Rampart in Apex Legends, and Navin Rao in Battlefield 2042 both games are owned by EA.
Another example of Indian characters in the game is some Hindu Gods and entities added as characters, like Shiva and Ganesha and others in a game called Smite.
Riot games sure have gained a lot of fame with their game Valorant and partnering with one of the biggest esports organizations in India; Global Esports, among the top 30 partners, might have a connection with the release of their new agent. Nevertheless, fans are excited about the skills and name reveal of the character and will possibly be insta-locking the character while playing after release.
All this attention towards the Indian esports market by these giant gaming companies shows that they might have realized the true potential of the gaming market and esports in India.