VALORANT: players are calling the Wasteland Vandal a "pay to lose" skin

August 2024 · 2 minute read

Since VALORANT is a free to play tactical shooter, Riot Games sells cosmetic items like weapon skins to keep the whole operation profitable.

In order to keep the experience as fair as possible, Riot only sells weapon skins instead of character skins as that may interfere with the competitive integrity of Valorant. Riot always likes to push the boundary when it comes to creating interactive skins.

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Past skin collections like the Elderflame has been quite divisive among the community since some players thought these skins might be too distracting during tournaments. Some tournaments even banned the use of some skin lines in Valorant.

However, this time a player with a really keen eye discovered a weird quirk in the Wasteland skin bundle that actually turned the game into a “pay to lose” fiasco. Basically, the problem began with the wasteland vandal skin that appears to have a slightly longer muzzle than its default counterpart.

Wasteland vandal is “pay to lose”

The skin features a slightly longer muzzle that protrudes a little bit. Unfortunately, that can turn into a huge disadvantage as your opponents can detect you slightly faster than they should when you are turning over a corner.

In a game that has a really low time to kill, and where having information about your opponents can be the difference between winning and losing, players that equip this wasteland vandal skin might actually be at a slight disadvantage.

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VALORANT had some issues with skin lines in the past. For example, the Singularity Phantom appeared to have a slightly longer equip animation while a weird sound glitch in VALORANT affected the Elderflame vandal skin.

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