There’s a relatively large update coming to VALORANT – 6.07 – and it’s going to bring with it an all-new VALORANT bundle that introduces skins that are all too familiar. In the Black Market bundle, CSGO-style skins will be included, and the skins themselves will switch depending on what side the player is currently representing – attack or defence.
It’s a long-awaited feature that fans of the CS competitor have been calling out for for quite some time, but it’s a limited thing, as the developer – Riot Games – has highlighted that this isn’t a feature that could become a broad, permanent thing.
CSGO Skins Are in the VALORANT Bundle
It’s a tongue-in-cheek reference to the VALORANT’s biggest competitor. Since VALORANT surfaced in 2020, it has tried relentlessly to loosen the grip that CSGO has on the industry, and for the most part, it has done a really good job. Both the general community behind VALORANT and the esports scene have grown at a rapid rate – but for all the accomplishments, CS does remain king.
On April 12th, the Black Market bundle will be released in the VALORANT store, giving players the opportunity to customise five weapons with skins that are eerily familiar. They’re effectively representations of real-world weapons, and they’re almost mirror images of default CSGO skins. In the bundle, players will receive:
- Black Market Bulldog (which becomes a FAMAS)
- Black Market Vandal (which becomes an AK47)
- Black Market Marshal (which becomes a Scout)
- Black Market Classic (which becomes a Glock 18)
- Black Market Knife (which becomes a butterfly knife)
But It Doesn’t End There
That’s not all, though – for the first time ever, the skins will change depending on which ‘side’ the player is representing – which is the default standard in Counter-Strike.
This has been a feature that players have wanted for a long time, but Associate Art Director, Sean Marino, explained why it has taken so long to introduce the mechanic, speaking on the strain it would put on systems:
Truthfully, we haven’t done the full load test to see what the memory impact would be if every player could load in with multiple skins but there are some presumptions we can make. We want players to get in the game quickly and not have a bunch of things going on in the background preventing you from doing that- more memory means bigger hardware memory requirement.
Mathematically, every player brings eighteen skins into each game with them, and for ten players in a match, that’s a total of 180 skins – which is acceptable when it comes to load times and performance limitations.
With the Black Market bundle, that number will increase – but only slightly, as not every player will have that bundle. But, if Riot was to make it so that every player can have different skins for both attack and defence teams, then it’ll permanently increase the count to 360 skins, which the developer assumes would have a detrimental impact on performance and load times.
Players will be able to get their hands on the Black Market bundle from April 12th – at the moment, the price is unknown.
For more Insider Gaming news, check out our coverage of the potential Mortal Kombat 12 announcement that could be coming.
