Does VALORANT Have Controller Support?
Does Riot Games new FPS title VALORANT support controller play?
Sascha Heinisch
03rd Sep 2020 18:30
VALORANT, Riot Games’ new free-to-play multiplayer first-person shooter has become many people’s favourite pastime. Building on the gameplay fundamentals of Counter-Strike, the game is similar but has distinct differences when it comes to ability usage. With clear gameplay similarities to be spotted to games like Overwatch, the console controller player might rightfully ask if it’s possible to play with a controller.
Does VALORANT Have Controller Support?
Strictly speaking yes, you can play VALORANT with a controller like the Xbox 360 or the Xbox One controller, though we recommend against using third-party software to make this work as the aggressive anti-cheat software “Vanguard” that Riot is using might find conflicts, and falsely flag your account or even your hardware ID. Especially if you have purchased skins or other in-game services on your account, we wouldn’t take the risk. If you still aren’t dissuaded from taking the chance, software that lets you bind each controller button to a game key will do the trick.
The second issue for players with a controller is that the analogue stick doesn’t lend itself to the gameplay experience. A lot of VALORANT’s play style features holding tight pixel-perfect angles and staying glued to a corner while you walk around it. Movement adding significant inaccuracy to your gunfire is a gameplay feature that separates what Riot is trying to do with VALORANT from run-and-gun games, like Call of Duty or Overwatch.
Moreover, there’s no aim-assist for controllers in VALORANT, putting you at a significant disadvantage over mouse users to a point at which it likely won’t make for a great gameplay experience.
What about the analogue stick for movement?
The one justified dimension that might see use if VALORANT was ever to add native controller support is to use the analogue sticks for movement, as it theoretically opens up many more movement directions than are available with a keyboard only using the WASD-keys. With WASD, you only have the choice to move in eight different directions pressing either of those keys alone or at the same time with the adjacent ones. With an analogue stick, however, the options for very precise movement become larger, theoretically allowing players to move in directions such as only 20° from the centre point instead of strict 45-degree angles. From a game-theoretical standpoint, this offers considerable benefits and some professional players have mused on the superiority of analogue sticks in comparison to keyboard keys before.
Unfortunately, using this functionality is currently not supported either, as the mapping of the analogue stick only recognises the four different directions that the keyboard has. We can only hope that these functionalities will come to the PC too, though it is unlikely that it will be added any time soon.
Taking a look at father Counter-Strike
Deriving a lot of the gameplay features from Counter-Strike with a modernised ability system, the experience is still very similar to the now 20-year-old veteran FPS title. While Counter-Strike did make it to consoles at some point, the gameplay experience was meagre, best illustrated by the consistently low player numbers which eventually led to Valve stopping to actively support those platforms. Considering the similarities between VALORANT and Counter-Strike, Riot would have to significantly alter the gameplay experience to make it work. There have been hints that this might be happening but so far, we have no positive news to report which could lead to better controller support down the line.
GGRecon will update you if controller support was to be added to VALORANT at some point.
Image via Riot Games and Microsoft
About The Author
Sascha Heinisch
Sascha "Yiska" Heinisch is a Senior Esports Journalist at GGRecon. He's been creating content in esports for over 10 years, starting with Warcraft 3.
