5 articles — 2 patch notes, 3 news
Patch 17.7 is a buff-heavy update that rebalances Space Gods while bringing back Set 16 with Choncc's Treasure, plus Shen gains a new origin and Vex joins the Stargazers.
Patch 13.01 cracks down on ranked integrity with new rank manipulation penalties, while three agents and a weapon receive tuning.
Riot is halving ranked rating losses on Valorant's new Summit map for two weeks, a surprisingly generous move to get competitive players experimenting without fear. Act 4 also brings a 3v3 Retake mode that might pull lapsed players back in.
Brian Holinka, who spent 11 years at Blizzard working on World of Warcraft's combat and PvP systems, just started as principal game designer on Riot's LoL MMO. He's at least the third WoW veteran to join a project that still hasn't shown a single frame of gameplay.
A cocky tweet about cheaters' hardware becoming "$6K paperweights" spiraled into full-blown panic about Riot's kernel-level anti-cheat destroying PCs. The company spent the next day in damage control.