Fact Check: Can you play Valorant on Nvidia GeForce NOW?

Valorant is a hero tactical first-person shooter from Riot Games. The game's free-to-play nature has fueled its popularity and playerbase, although its potential seems limited due to its restricted platform availability. With the online gaming community rapidly growing, many fans have been wondering whether the title is available on the popular cloud gaming platform, Nvidia Geforce NOW.

Unfortunately, the fast-paced competitive shooter is not available on Nvidia’s cloud service. The game is also yet to debut on any other cloud-gaming platform. It is only available on Windows PC right now, where it needs to be downloaded and installed in the system for it to run.

Nvidia Geforce NOW is a popular cloud-gaming service that offers affordable subscription rates and a huge collection of titles. However, not all games are available on Geforce NOW. This article provides information for those wondering whether Valorant will become playable on Nvidia's cloud service.

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Is Valorant available on Nvidia Geforce NOW?

The concept of cloud gaming has improved over the years before it finally reached a stable stage. Apart from saving money, internet data, and storage, cloud services allow users to experience video games regardless of whether their device's hardware specifications meet the minimum requirements.

Valorant mandatorily requires Riot Client and Riot Vanguard to run on a system. Riot's home-grown anti-cheat solution, Vanguard, does not support virtual machines.

Technically, Nvidia Geforce NOW rents users a virtual machine for them to play on. Thus, the game cannot be made available on the platform unless Riot Vanguard offers more flexibility. Furthermore, there are no unofficial workarounds to make it work.

As per reports, Riot Games has been working on a mobile port for the popular tactical shooter. The game may also receive a port for consoles in the future. However, the developers have previously pointed out the limitations of portraying a game of such nature on consoles.

Valorant's platform availability is extremely limited at the moment. It's unknown whether the CS:GO-like tactical FPS game will be made available on Nvidia Geforce NOW or similar services anytime soon. However, it may make its debut on Xbox Cloud Gaming, or the Nvidia service after its platform availability expands.

Riot Games' recent collaboration with Microsoft and Xbox Game Pass hints at further possibilities. Earlier this year, Valorant, League of Legends, Legends of Runterra, and several other games created under Riot's hood made their way into the Xbox Game Pass. Hence, the tactical shooter may launch on Xbox Cloud Gaming sooner than on Nvidia Geforce NOW.

Meanwhile, the Geforce NOW library is fairly adequate as it features hundreds of popular games. Some shooter games like Fortnite and Destiny 2 are also available.

Being a competitive shooter, Valorant isn't the right fit for cloud gaming. Cloud-based services won't be able to provide steady frames for such competitive games. Players may struggle to put up a fight against enemies and could instead ruin their gameplay experience. Riot Games may have considered such limitations before choosing to ignore cloud gaming for the time being.

Presently, Nvidia Geforce GPUs provide several optimization options for Riot's competitive hero-based FPS game. Enabling such options in-game and utilizing some settings from the Geforce Experience application will reduce latency and tackle performance issues for a seamless experience.