Despite the fact that the esports industry continues to grow globally, one of the things that cannot go unnoticed is the toxicity that exists towards women by some gamers. It is because of that Riot games decided to start a new initiative in favor of women within Valorant.
Through a release, the developer announced the new Valorant Game Changers, a new program that ‘will complement the competitive season by creating new opportunities and visibility for women and other marginalized genders within Valorant esports‘.
Anna donlon, executive producer of Valorant, presented the initiative through a video. In it, he reiterated that they seek to create more competitive opportunities for marginalized genders, promoting the talent of women and giving them a space to show themselves safely.
‘As a woman, competing in games can be quite daunting, often resulting in competitive disadvantage. While we are tackling this challenge with improvements to chat, voice communication, and harassment mitigation, we also see an opportunity to go one step further with esports.‘.
‘We are committed to creating a valuable social experience for all and we look forward to continuing to work together toward that goal.‘said the member of the Riot games.
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Controversy arises over Valorant Game Changers
Though Riot games affirmed that it tries to end discrimination and harassment towards women within the game, some users in networks did not agree with the creation of Game Changers.
People like Rodrigo Dalmagro, coach of Valorant For Krü Esports, he considers that separating electronic sports competitions by gender only causes a greater difference in level.
Likewise, there were other users who criticized Riot games because of the fact that women have more paths to professionalism.
However, they lose sight of the fact that so far there are not many opportunities for the female gender to compete, due to issues such as discrimination and harassment. An example of this was what happened to the player Murmaider in a ranked game of Valorant.
Cases like that of Murmaider occur recurrently in any video game. Women tend to change their username to a generic one or mute their voice chat simply to avoid feeling threatened.
That is why Riot Games tries to eliminate these differences and, at the very least, create a tournament so that women feel free to compete in a safe environment.
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