Valorant secretly removed key radio commands from the game with update 8.11, and the community has taken notice.
The 8.11 update revitalized Valorant by reintroducing the fan-favorite map Haven, adding the new map Abyss, and lifting map restrictions on all modes except competitive. In addition to all the map changes, Valorant also opted to change up the radio commands.
Radio commands in Valorant are accessible to everyone and are particularly useful for players without a microphone. Pressing the comma key displays a scroll wheel with all available commands, or pressing the Z key brings up a menu of these options.
These commands received an “update” in the latest patch, which the developers addressed in the patch notes. However, the individual commands that were removed were not made public.
“We’ve also removed some less useful commands to make the wheels as quick and easy to use as possible while making sure the most important commands are easy to access,” said the developers.
Players began discussing what commands had been removed in a Reddit thread, pointing out that some of the changes seemed counterintuitive to making essential callouts to teammates.
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So far, players have identified the “Let’s rotate”, “Going A, B, or C” and “Be quiet” commands were all removed with this update.
“I use the ping wheel 24/7, and I am SO sad that they removed the going a/b/c and rotate pings. The new ones are useful, but they removed the ones that were used the most,” stated one player.
The removal of commands was not the only topic of discussion. Another player discovered that a new status had been added in place of the old ones.
“They did add a “[player] will lurk” command. I feel like that was just to piss people off tho, as it’s pretty useless,” said another user.
Valorant’s attempt to refine the radio commands may have unintentionally worsened the situation by removing some of the community’s most commonly used commands. Players are hopeful that the pushback will prompt the developers to reintegrate these commands back into the scroll wheel.
