JOHANNESBURG - August 22, 2023 - Video game developer and publisher Riot Games will be launching local VALORANT servers in South Africa, which will be activated on 31 August. The announcement follows its partnership with Carry1st, who will run campaigns to engage with VALORANT players across various cities in South Africa.

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After a record-breaking closed beta debut and successful global launch in 2020, VALORANT quickly established itself as a global fan-favorite, emerging as one of the most prominent FPS games available on PC. 

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Carry1st will provide interactive experiences for fans of VALORANT. With significantly improved latency, South African players can look forward to a seamless experience of the 5v5 tactical shooter game.

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“We’re excited to partner with Riot Games to scale the reach of VALORANT in South Africa,” said Carry1st CEO, Cordel Robbin-Coker. “With the introduction of local servers, African gamers can enjoy their gameplay experience on par with players around the world!”

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“Serving our global playerbase is a top priority for us at Riot, and this partnership with Carry1st will make meaningful improvements in bringing African players a first-class VALORANT experience,” said Hasan Colakoglu, Head of International at Riot Games. “Carry1st has great local publishing expertise and resources, and we’re excited to deepen our relationship with a company we’ve believed in for quite some time and helped support as part of our Underrepresented Founders program.”

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To celebrate the server launch, Carry1st invites gamers to experience VALORANT in-person at Comic Con Africa from 22-25 September in Johannesburg. Players can learn about the game, join VALORANT tournaments, win exclusive giveaways, and more. Fans can also stay tuned to Carry1st social channels for regular updates on events and other exciting news.

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News of the locally deployed servers comes off the back of the highly-anticipated VALORANT Champions 2023, the third world championship in the game’s history. This year’s championship, which features a head-to-head battle between the world’s best teams live in Los Angeles, includes a record $2.25-million prize pool.

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About Carry1st

Carry1st is Africa’s leading publisher of games and digital content. Its mission is to scale awesome content in frontier markets by solving hard problems. Carry1st develops, licenses, and publishes games and monetizes them effectively with Pay1st, a proprietary payments and online marketplace, the Carry1st Shop, to better monetize content in the region. The company has scaled games such as Call of Duty®: Mobile, Mine Rescue, and SpongeBob: Krusty Cook-Off. Founded in 2018, the company is backed by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), BITKRAFT, Google, and Riot Games. 

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About VALORANT:

VALORANT is a competitive 5v5 character-based tactical shooter developed by Riot Games. VALORANT is a precise and lethal multiplayer game with high-fidelity gunplay, a diverse arsenal of guns, agents with unique abilities, and competitively tuned maps for thousands of hours of play. 

VALORANT is a free-to-play game and optimized to perform on a wide variety of PC hardware, allowing for a global audience to compete. Demonstrated by the game’s best-in-class game server quality, global infrastructure, and proprietary anti-cheat technology, Riot Games is committed to preserving the core tenets of the tactical shooter genre and upholding the competitive integrity of the gameplay experience.  

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About Riot Games:

Riot Games was founded in 2006 to develop, publish, and support the most player-focused games in the world. In 2009, Riot released its debut title, League of Legends, to worldwide acclaim. League has gone on to be the most-played PC game in the world and a key driver of the explosive growth of esports. With League in its second decade, Riot is continuing to evolve the game while delivering new experiences to players with Teamfight Tactics, Legends of Runeterra, VALORANT, League of Legends: Wild Rift, Riot Forge, and multiple work-in-progress titles. Riot is also expanding the world of Runeterra through multimedia projects across music, comic books, board games, and Arcane, its Emmy-winning animated series.

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Founded by Brandon Beck and Marc Merrill, Riot is headquartered in Los Angeles, California, and has 4,500+ Rioters in 20+ offices worldwide.

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