Valorant has taken the first-person hero shooter genre by storm, with its free-to-play nature and massive player base allowing many to make a living off of it as well as have a great time with friends. But is Valorant pay-to-win?
Valorant is not pay-to-win as the in-game transactions don’t have an impact on your chances of winning, they are just cosmetic. The heroes or agents can be unlocked via playing the game and the battle pass and other items don’t make you better.
Let’s look at the game to see what’s going on with in-game purchases, what you can get from the store and how much it all costs, as well as consider what is worth buying and what isn’t worth buying out of the many choices between skins, agents and everything else.
Is Valorant a Pay-to-Win Kind of Game?
Valorant is not a pay-to-win game as none of the items you can purchase make any difference to the gameplay itself that would give you an advantage.
The most common thing that is purchased in Valorant is the weapon skins. These skins only give a cosmetic difference to your weapon and do not change any of the underlying operations of the weapon.
That means you don’t get reduced recoil control, cost, or any other attribute of the weapon.
This means that you can become the best Valorant player in the world without actually investing a single red cent into it. It also means the best player in the world could sign up with a new account, go in with default skins and still dominate any lobby.
Riot has been very clear that they want a competitive game that anybody can get into without having to buy their way there.
The only things you can purchase via the in-game store are weapon and melee skins, Radianite points to evolve your skins, agent contract tiers and a battle pass.
The battle pass allows you access to an in-game leveling system, where you have to earn experience points to go up tiers. In Valorant, this goes up to 55 tiers, and once you successfully get to the next tier you’ll unlock a reward
As these battle pass items can’t be obtained outside the battle pass system in almost every situation, they are thus quite rare and highly sought after.
Contracts are in-game challenges that include certain objectives. Once you complete these objectives, you will unlock additional content.
It is important to recognize that not all agents are immediately available in Valorant, but they can be unlocked by grinding through the contracts. You can also buy them directly if you can’t be bothered waiting.
This is done by piling up XP, which is itself best achieved via the daily challenges.
How Much Would It Cost to Buy Everything in Valorant?
To put a price on Valorant items is notoriously difficult as the prices are very dynamic. Some bundles are not available anymore, meaning you’d have to buy the skins individually.
As some content can be unlocked by grinding XP, it essentially just takes time. There are plenty of guides out there on how to effectively grind for these items, and there are a few strategies you can employ to really get the most out of the challenges and contracts.
Skins
However, to buy all the skins in Valorant, you would be looking at a minimum price of just under $2000, but more likely it would be closer to $4500 plus.
New skins are constantly being released, and you can spend even more money to upgrade the weapons’ skin such as all the different colors, bringing the total up to just under $10,000.
You’re looking at purchasing over 300 regular skins, two legacy skins from the Champions 2021 collection, and every battle pass since it first came out.
Agents
The other thing you can purchase is the agents. One level of an agent’s contract costs 200 Valorant Points which is about $2, and to unlock the agent itself you need to get to level five of their individual contract.
As of the time of writing, there are 19 agents but you get Phoenix, Sage, Sova, Brimstone, and Jett by default. So that leaves 14 that you either have to unlock via the contract system or you can just pay 1000 Valorant points per agent.
What Is Worth Buying in Valorant?
The battle pass is a great purchase to use your Valorant Points on, as you unlock a lot of in-game content such as weapon skins, player cards, gun buddies, sprays, and titles.
Player Cards are cosmetic images that are a way to customize your account as they will show in the background.
Gun buddies are little charms that appear on your weapon.
Sprays allow you to tag walls like graffiti, while titles are shown beneath everyone’s in-game name while waiting in the lobby or during the loading screen.
The battle pass itself only costs 1000 Valorant points, or approximately $10, and you’ll get at least 10 skins from it, with some battle passes giving you 13 skins in total once all are unlocked.
Seeing as some skins can easily cost over 1500 Valorant points, you can get a pretty good deal with the battle pass.
If you see a weapon skin that you like and you enjoy playing the game, having that skin constantly can be very fun if you’re into cosmetics.
Keep in mind that the developer of Valorant, Riot, has come out and stated that they will not bring skin trading into the game as is the case with other titles like CS:GO. [1]
This can be a great way to get skins for cheap, but unfortunately, the only real option is to purchase them directly from Valorant’s store.
It’s not worth buying agents as you can just unlock these through general playing of the game. Unless you are really impatient, it would be a waste of money to get agents. And since I answered your question is Valorant pay-to-win, you can understand now that you can win without purchasing any special equipment.
