VCL is getting a big revamp as Riot Games announced three big chances that might change a lot for the upcoming stars in the Challengers League. Here's all you need to know about it.
Valorant Challengers League is a new system that was released by Riot Games just over a year ago. For now, it seems like a good gateway for upcoming teams to slowly but surely join the Tier 1 scene, and Riot feels like there's something missing and therefore announced three BIG changes to it.
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Valorant Challengers League Will Now Go Through The Entire Year
Yep, you heard it right. VCL will be going on throughout the year, which is the first and most important change to undergo from the next season. This means the teams will get more games to practice on, and also get exposed more to the community. The League will now start in January with its first matches, after those the playoffs will come, and then the tournament with promotion & relegation, and after this is done, the second split. The promotion tournament mentioned earlier will have the bottom-placed teams from the league and the top-placed Premier teams from its region.
Depending on the region, some of the leagues will have Open Qualifiers to fill in the spots that will be empty before the season starts. Ascension on the other hand will have its schedule started in September, with the 2025 Challengers League starting right after the promotion event that will go on in October. This is a big change for the fans, as they will have more and more Valorant games to watch.
Valorant Challengers League Will Introduce Two-Way Players
This has been in the talks for a while, and it seems like it will be a thing next season. This change will have an effect on the player's eligibility and the rules affecting them. The International League teams will now have the option to have partnerships with the teams from both the Valorant Challengers League & the players from the GC teams starting in 2024. These are affiliate contracts and they have one rule and that is that the player must be from the same region as the partnership org. That rule affects the VCL teams only, as the GC teams can be international.
Take this as the G-League in the NBA (formerly known as D-League). There the G-League is basically the development league, and the teams have "affiliated" teams with different names that are contracted to them. In Valorant it will be the same, and for example, Sentinels can have an affiliate partnership with another team from the VCL, and have Two-Way players with them. The Two-Way players will be able to switch between the regular leagues and their origin leagues but only between those two teams.
Player Loans Will Finally Be Official Next Season For The Valorant International Leagues
The third and last change is the player loans. You are probably already familiar with the term as it's something that has been going on in soccer for a while. In Valorant, any of the International teams will have the ability to loan any of their players to any of the Challengers or GC teams. Once loaned, the player won't be able to come back to his original team until the season passes.
This will probably be a way for some of their pub stars to get experience while not losing the player and keeping them on a contract. That's all for the upcoming changes that will be due in the next season.
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