30-40 minute games
Valorant proposes for the moment two types of games, while waiting for the Competitive mode.
- Normal Game: the classic mode where the first team to win 13 rounds is victorious.
- Spike Rush: a fun game mode with special bonuses and random weapons where you have to win four rounds to win the game.
We're counting on a duration of 30-40 minutes for a normal game. Ranked games should have a similar duration, in particular because for the moment the buy phases shouldn't contain any ban.
30-40 minutes is obviously an average. Duration may vary depending on the game. One-way matches will be much shorter (fewer rounds) than very tight matches (many rounds). As the stopwatch is binding for each round, it is also not possible to make a game last to infinity even if you want to do it on purpose.
Maximum time of a game
For fun and for science, some players had fun doing tests. By making each round last on purpose, they calculated the maximum theoretical duration of a game. To do so, they obviously managed to optimize the duration. They detail their calculations:
- The selection time for an agent is currently 80 seconds.
- Each round lasts a maximum of 100 seconds if the spike isn't put down.
- Planting the Spike increases the duration of the round up to a bonus of 45 seconds (no defusing).
- Between each round there's a 7-second transition time with a 10-second transition time just before victory.
- The buy phase is 30 seconds each time. Except for the first set of each half and the decisive set (at 12-12) where the time is 45 seconds.
All in all, by making all of these events happen, we can get a game of 4,683 seconds, or 78 minutes.
Conversely, the players in question also tried to keep the game as short as possible. This was more difficult to achieve, with changing maps and the players' ability to find the shortest path. However, it seems that a game could theoretically last only 10 minutes. You can even count even less, if a whole team disconnects in the first round.
Valorant answers your questions! In a post published over the weekend, the development team has put forward some answers to the most requested questions.
