Official VALORANT PBE FAQ
Please use this link if you are looking for an answer to the following questions:
PBE Sign-up Questions
• Why Is the PBE Only Available in North America?
• What Are the Sign-up Requirements?
• Okay, I Signed Up! What Happens Next?
• How Often Will You Be Recruiting?
• What Can Affect My Eligibility?
PBE Client and Account Questions
• Where Can I Download the PBE Client?
• Why Can’t I Log in to the PBE?
• Why Is the PBE Down?
• How Will I Know if the PBE Is Available?
• I Used to Have Access to the PBE, but Now I Don’t. What Happened?
• Why Am I in a Login Queue?
• Can I Share My PBE Account?
• Where Can I Find Information on PBE Updates?
Pbe Platform and Gameplay Questions
• How Is Player Behavior Monitored on the PBE?
• What Are the Consequences of Bad Behavior?
• How Do I Report Bugs?
• Do I Have to Buy Anything in the PBE?
• Why Is My Ping So High?
• Matchmaking Takes a Long Time and I Wind Up in Unfair Match-Ups!
General Questions
These are the most commonly asked questions and may have some overlap with the section above.
Where Is My Invite?
• It can take several weeks/months to be invited, so please be patient. Because invite waves are manual and server capacity is limited, invites usually go out to a small group of eligible players once every other PBE patch, so regularly check your email & Riot Client. You do not have PBE access unless you:
• Received the acceptance email (may not receive it but still gain access)
• Have the dropdown menu for VALORANT PBE in your Riot Client
• Received the acceptance email (may not receive it but still gain access)
• Have the dropdown menu for VALORANT PBE in your Riot Client
When Is the PBE Live?
• Please check the schedule
How Do Skins Work?
• All skins on the PBE are free! However, Exclusive, Ultra, Battlepass, & Limited Edition skins are not. Newly released skins that aren't in any of the listed categories may be available at some point in the future. You can view all available skins using the link below!
• Skins do not transfer from live to PBE
• Shop rotation works the same as live
• Everyone receives the same bundle, which is unknown until its release
• Your skin collection on PBE will never reset
• Shop rotation works the same as live
• Everyone receives the same bundle, which is unknown until its release
• Your skin collection on PBE will never reset
How Do Agents Work?
• All Agents are unlocked: Note that contracts are not completed (this is intended)
• New Agents are automatically unlocked
Why Can't I Buy the Battlepass?
• The battlepass is technically not even meant to be in the PBE, but Riot seemed to be having some issues with keeping it out of the build, so they leave an old one in as a placeholder. You cannot purchase it, but you can get the free items
Can I Share, Buy, or Trade Accounts?
• No. Each Agent must maintain their own account. Remember—your PBE account is the same as your Live account. Sharing it could get you permanently suspended (and nobody wants that!)
Can I stream the PBE?
• You can stream the PBE, but the focus is to find bugs and instability issues, so content creators are not encouraged to solely focus on the PBE for content
Will the PBE Come To Other Regions?
Riot statement:
• We decided to start our experiment in North America, where most of our developers live. This lets us quickly react to feedback and efficiently implement updates on a regular basis. With the location locked in, we considered what would be best for players. As much as we wanted to open the doors to Agents from other regions, the resulting latency would ruin their experience and make it difficult to gather good data about new content.
• While there are other reasons (cost limitations, network logistics, etc.), we ultimately chose the path that would provide the best experience to a limited group of players, so we could use what we learned to benefit Agents around the world.
How Do I Play Outside of NA?
• The PBE is for NA accounts only. You can use a VPN to create one, but the use of third-party tools/apps/programs may result in an account ban. To be accepted, you still must meet eligibility requirements.
Specific Questions
Please note that these answers are subject to change and may not currently represent the subject.
Why Is Competitive the Only Queue?
• We’re restricting to a single queue in order to get the best possible matchmaking. We chose Competitive because it helps us to get verification from all of you that the RR gains and rank promotions are all working as expected.
• While we understand that VAL is a very competitive game, let’s please keep it focused on everyone having a good experience. It’s okay if you want to play to win, but you should expect that some of your teammates may be more focused on testing something out.
Can the Store Rotate More Frequently?
• This is something that we discussed before launch but hadn’t made a final decision on. We’re absolutely aware of the feedback and considering it!
Can We Get an in-Game Bug Reporting Feature?
• Answered by u/koalifier [previous Riot staff]
• One of the biggest problems we have struggled to solve is the raw volume of reports that we’d get from you all if we had that kind of system.
• One of the things that we love about using Reddit for bug reporting is that it’s easy for you all to see that other players are reporting your bug, leaving you free to add info to a thread or just give it an upvote.
• If we built a system that forwarded the bugs straight to us, you all wouldn’t be able to see each other’s reports, so we get a ton of duplicate reports. The obvious solution here is for us to build a bug reporting system that also allows players public access to see the bugs and upvote them, but this was a much bigger engineering effort than we were willing to invest in right away.
• It’s something we’re interested in having in the future, but we don’t have plans to build it, so for now, the subreddit is the best way to go. Thanks so much for your understanding!
Can You Add the PBE Patch Notes in a Panel In-Game?
• Answered by u/koalifier [previous Riot staff]
• We’d really like to do that, but it is surprisingly complicated to get this working. It’s not something that we prioritized for the first deployment, but we are looking into it in the future. For the foreseeable future, we’ll just be using the subreddit to post these notes.