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Is It Worth To Go Pro In Valorant

Pro teams are in the never-ending search for a new prodigy. Do you have what it takes to be the next one ?
Optic Gaming Crashies1
This article will help you decide whether you should take crashies road to glory, or not | © Riot Games

Fancy stages, enormous prize pools, and salaries to be jealous of. Is that not enough to want to go Pro? This article will take you on the full road trip on how and why people decide to become pros.

What It Means To Go Pro In Valorant

Taking Valorant seriously and committing to it is something that came to everyone's head at some point while playing the game. Playing at Tier 1 or 2 level in Valorant means you are a celebrity and in the top percentile of players in the game. That is because you've committed a gigantic amount of hours in the game, in some cases tens of thousands, and with it, you've managed to climb the leaderboards to become one of the best.

The 10 Best Valorant Pro Players View gallery

To reach this level you have to sacrifice a lot of things going on in your life. To compete with the current pros you can't afford to have a 9-5 job or any house duty while striving to become a top-tier esport athlete. Because that 9-5 job, needs to be replaced with 12+ hours of dedication to Valorant as being an esports athlete is almost the same as being a regular sports athlete. At this level, Training Sessions become Pub Games, Scrimming becomes Valorant Scrims and the Regular Matches become the Officials you will have to prove yourself into.

When Is The Right Time To Go Pro

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Acend.MONSTERR started his Pro journey at the age of 16 | © TeamHeretics

There are several factors that determine whether you should play Valorant for fun or do your best to make it your dream job.

And they are:

  • Age
  • Current life situation
  • Skill Level & Rank

The ideal age pros should have is a debatable topic in every Esports game and the definite answer varies as time goes on. There are a lot of examples of super-young prodigies becoming extremely good at the game with little game time which is an indicator that ages 16 to 22 could be ideal as a starting point. The cons of starting so early are that you are not mature enough (yet), at that age.

Being good at the game isn't enough as Valorant is a team game and you will have to know how to communicate properly, take losses in a normal manner and be a good teammate. The next age group that seems to be the most stable once they reach their peak rank is 22-28. Most coaches love having that age group in their team as they are much easier to manage, and issues are usually easily resolved.

These are important points to decide when to go pro, but not critical. There are also tons of examples of players being 28+ and having a heck of a career run. As an example, we can take the popular streamer and G2's ingame leader ShahZaM. There is one exception with this age group, and that is that they usually have prior pro experience with CS:GO, and are not so new to the competitive stage.

The Road To Glory

Before giving the conclusion on the topic of this article, we should explain what the roadmap looks like on the path to being the next "prodigy Duelist for Sentinels".

Zekken Chad1
Zekken went from Silver 1, to a prodigy duelist for Sentinels | © Riot Games

We will split it into chapters:

  • Getting noticed in the pub community
  • Trying your utmost best in every game
  • Getting as much competitive experience as you can
  • Nailing a move to a Tier 2 or 1 Team/Org

Before anything, let's cut it short. If you haven't reached Radiant or Immortal rank you shouldn't have your hopes high to become a Valorant Pro. For teams and orgs it's socially acceptable to strive to become a pro once you reach those ranks, as you will officially be in that top percentile of players. Once you're there your next step would be to get noticed in the high-rank pubs and be a "known" player in the Community.

What most people do is become a one-trick pony and have one Agent in their pool with which they play at their level. This is a good way to become noticed, but rarely do teams like players that have such a small Agent-Pool for their role. If you deliver good performance in your games with several Agents and do your utmost best, that kind of attention and noticing will bring you closer to a good Team.

From then on giving your all and best to Valorant is the most logical thing to do. Scrims and pubs will take most of your time, and if you're cut to be the one, you will be the one.

The Benefits Of Becoming Pro

Enough about the dark things and no-lifing over becoming a pro in our lovely game, let's talk about the good stuff. Depending on where you live, and what your possibilities for a job or wasting time are, Valorant salaries can be super competitive! Tier 1 teams make 5 figures in monthly salaries, and Tier 2 teams give 4 figures which are slightly over the minimum wage in the Western World.

How Much Do Valorant Pros Make?

We know that's the next thing you were going to google once reading this, so we will spare you the time googling and give you an answer.

These are the factors that determine a pros salary in an org:

  • Social network reach
  • Skill in-game
  • Experience
  • Current popularity and how much other teams would want you

We will start with the Tier 1 teams. Orgs such as Sentinels, Fnatic, Liquid, or similar ones are known as rich orgs and give quite generous salaries. There are multiple reports over the final numbers, but we asked some pros ourselves and got some pretty surprising numbers. It's reported that 5-figure monthly salaries can reach the amount of 240k $ per year, which is more than what software engineers or even doctors make.

Tier 2 teams are less generous, but that's understandable given the fact they have less exposure, and sponsors but also play less popular tournaments. Their yearly income can go from 11k $ up to 30k $ depending on how good the player is.

Building Your Own Community

Salary from a team isn't the only thing you will be getting once you're an established pro. Getting to this level will make you noticed, which will later help you a lot in building your own community. Streaming, Sponsorship deals, Merch, and other similar stuff will be a part of your income. We can take TenZ as an example.

Tenz Twitch11
This is what TenZ's about me looks like on Twitch | Twitch @TenZ

Tenz streams "almost" regularly, has a solid amount of viewers and subscribers, has his own merch shop, and has a sponsorship deal with Sentinels sponsors. We can already see 3 different sides of income and can add another, 4th one once we add in the Tournament Winnings.

Conclusion - Is It Worth To Go Pro?

Once we covered the most important topics of the subject, I think we're ready for a conclusion. If you're a hard-working, ambitious, and young individual that's in love with the game the answer is YES. If you're going to go all in on this journey and can realistically reach the ranks needed to become noticed and picked up by a team you WILL make more than most professions that are popular as of now.

BUT, you should remember that this is a super-competitive environment and there will be tons more like you competing for that same spot. In the end, there could be a disappointment and a lot of your time wasted without getting picked up by any team. It's almost the same as artists, musicians, or sports athletes. This industry is a grateful and a super ungrateful one as it can reward you a lot for your hard work, but can push you down the same way for similar reasons.

That's all from us on if it's worth going pro in Valorant, if you loved this piece then we're sure you're gonna enjoy the other articles from the Valorfeed Esports Section, where there are tons more like these.

If you're not really sure what Esports is and how it works, the video below has a super insightful and educational explanation of it.


Stefan Nikolovski
Stefan Nikolovski

Stefan is obsessed with gaming as a whole but fell deeply in love with Valorant. He got to platinum just by playing Reyna and has felt like he is forever indebted to the community for that....