PBE stands for Public Beta Environment. It is a staple of League of Legends (LoL) patches. While games such as Gears of War have specified playlists that incorporate new in-game tuning, Riot Games has given League of Legends its own “test-centric” server. It’s high time Valorant gets its own PBE.

This PBE allows players to dive straight in to any upcoming changes that Riot Games intends on making for LoL. It has been a successful way for players to test upcoming updates. While bugs can happen anytime, the PBE ensures that LoL patches are as perfect as possible before going live in the full game.

Riot Games has previously announced that a PBE will be coming to Valorant in early 2021. There have been some uncharacteristically wonky patches from Riot Games for its first-person shooter, thus it only makes sense to give Valorant a Public Beta Environment.

Valorant Patch Issues

The implementation of a PBE in Valorant will avoid any future mishaps.

The rollback of patch 1.11 is a prime example of why a Public Beta Environment will only do good for the FPS. The Valorant Twitter account deemed 1.11 a “technical nightmare.”

Real talk: 1.11 has been a technical nightmare.

In 30 minutes, we'll be rolling back the patch for North America, Brazil, and LATAM (one at a time). We're also delaying all other regions until we get a fix. We know we've said this every patch, but thanks for sticking by. [1/2]

— VALORANT (@PlayVALORANT) October 27, 2020

Patch 1.11 was on schedule to completely disrupt the beginning of the First Strike Qualifiers. Players noted stuttering issues and graphical errors that were downright frightening. Riot Games decided to back things up to patch 1.10 until fixes could be implemented.

This means players had to wait for changes such as Skye becoming available, flash fade out fixes, a Breach buff, and updates to the economy. Thankfully, those that unlocked Skye were able to retain her once the patch was permanently live.

Patch 1.12 was not as game breaking as 1.11. It still had its share of issues, though. The biggest was accidental footstep audio changes across Deathmatch, the Shooting Range, and the New Player Experience mode. 1.12 was not a massive patch by any means. This makes it even more shocking that it was problematic at all.

We accidentally shipped some footstep audio changes to Deathmatch, the New Player Experience, and the Shooting Range. We'll get a fix out in the next patch or hotfix, sorry about that.

— VALORANT (@PlayVALORANT) November 10, 2020

PBE in Valorant

The fact that Riot Games is going on all in with Valorant as an esport means mistakes like this need to be avoided at all cost. Another patch 1.11 situation absolutely cannot happen.

Ask Valorant #10 holds the only details so far. Senior Release Manager Corrie Harden responded to the question of whether a test server would arrive in Valorant:

A Public Beta Environment is a necessity. At this point, no matter how quickly one can be implemented, it will not be soon enough.

This is the one and only surefire way to prevent any patch catastrophes from here on out. Valorant’s PBE needs to be on par with the effectiveness of League of Legends’. If Riot Games can make that happen, Valorant will keeping moving forward and never have to look back.

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