Riot Responds: Pro City is here to stay!
If you haven’t been following any Valorant news recently, you may still have heard of Pro City. It is an initiative taken on by Sentinels Content Creator Tarik as a response to the crypto betters and throwers that had been cropping up in Valorant’s Ranked queues.
However this system was not perfect. Although Tarik did try to keep the invites and application criteria impartial to maintain a high level of competition. However, many players and streamers who thought that they should have been invited felt that they had been snubbed.
Riot's Response:
In Tarik’s recent stream, he has confirmed that Pro City isn’t going away anytime soon. After days of silence from the developers, it was revealed in Tarik’s own stream that he had been in contact with Riot. Apparently, they don’t have any issue with this custom league. He said “I spoke with Riot, and they don’t have a plan of taking us down. They’re also open to us potentially introducing prizing.”
This is the first and only response that people have from Riot, directly or indirectly. It provides some clarity to the situation as well. Many were speculating if Riot would shut down Pro City or not. However, with the introduction of prizing, it means that Riot plans to take this seriously. It is also an indicator for others that Pro City is currently the best solution they have for their matchmaking problems.
Currently, Pro City has 139 players in North America. Including professionals like neT-, yay and BcJ, among many others. A host of streamers are also in the mix such as ethos and iiTzTimmy. Tarik, however, currently sits at the bottom of his own creation. He is ranked #139 with 775 MMR. He has stated that if he drops below 500 MMR, he will quit Pro City. You can check the Leaderboard here.
There is still no update on the ranked situation. However, it comes as a breath of relief for highly ranked players and pro players that Pro City isn’t going to be shut down by Riot anytime soon. And that it might also provide monetary benefits in the near future. Until the Ranked issue has been fixed, many top level players will try to make their way into Pro City for a better gaming experience.