Riot Games’ Joe Ziegler is saying goodbye to his role as Valorant’s game director to work on something new at the studio.
This news comes by way of a new post made by Ziegler on the official Riot website, in which he discusses his last eight years there. He reveals that Valorant, which was officially released last year, is something he’s been working on for eight years as the game director and that now, it’s time for him to move on.
“It is with a heart full of gratitude and deep excitement that I come to you today with news,” Ziegler writes. “After eight years working on Valorant, building it from the ground up with a team of dedicated and passionate developers who’ve worked tirelessly to serve you all with the respect and admiration that you deserve, I am giving up the mantle of game director of the Valorant tac-shooter to my good friend, Andy Ho [senior director of game direction at Riot].”
Ziegler said Ho is someone who has put many years of work into Valorant as well and that his dedication to the tac-shooter sets high standards of inspiration for developers on the game. Ziegler also said he’s confident that Ho’s time as the new director will see Valorant grow and evolve year-over-year “to become even better than what I could imagine it to be.”
As for Ziegler, he’ll be staying at Riot but he’ll be “starting something new (*wink, secrets…) in the hopes that we can even scratch the surface of the amazing impact Valorant has already had so far.” This could mean any number of things – perhaps he’s working on a game for Riot in a genre that’s popular that the studio hasn’t yet touched, much like Valorant was a success in the tac-shooter genre dominated by the likes of Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. Perhaps it means he’s working on a new game set in the same universe as Valorant. Only time will tell for now.
For more about Valorant, check out our thoughts on it in Game Informer’s Valorant review and then read about the new map, battle pass, and cosmetics added to it earlier this year. Check out this story about how Valorant Mobile is in the works after that.
Are you excited to see what Ziegler is working on now? Let us know in the comments below!
