Signs your addicted to Valorant
Story by a previously addicted Immortal ranked player.
With around 12 million active players each month in Riot’s first FPS game Valorant, it can seem totally fine to plug hours on end each day to rank up in the game. This is sadly not the case as with any game addiction, it can crush your true dreams in life and stop you from leveling up in the real world.
A Story about my Valorant Addiction
I know this because I was addicted ever since the day 1 beta launch of Valorant. Me and my “friends” played every day striving to reach the upper echelons of the ranked system. We felt accomplished for reaching the immortal rank and seeing my aim improve in Aimlabs, made me feel like I was close to playing with my heroes TenZ and Aceu. I even created a confidence guide video that accumulated 42,000 YouTube Views which TenZ and Aceu reacted to. That was probably the biggest highlight in my “Valorant career”.
I have since then completely quit Valorant and began pursuing my true passions as a self-development content creator and entrepreneur. So why did I throw away 1.6k subscribers and 100k+ views on YouTube? This occurred when I began realizing the effect that Valorant had on my life.
In-game I was a confident well-known player that people would be happy to see and a well accomplished ranked player. Outside of the game, I was a loser who masturbated 3 times a day, never exercised, barely went outside, got mad at my parents whenever they made me stop playing the game, and was a socially awkward wreck. I had big ambitions of improving myself physically, traveling the world as an online entrepreneur, and getting into a long-term relationship with a cute girl which were all put on hold due to 1 thing. Game addiction.
I got to a point where it felt more productive to spend 1 hour in Aimlabs (FPS aim trainer) than to do University homework or to go on outings with family and friends. For this, my grades suffered in school and my dream of living off an online business was stopped dead in its tracks. Suddenly 1 night while I was going through my cycle of playing Valorant ranked instead of finishing my university assignments I snapped. Instead of playing 1 game and reaching the next rank tier, I ended up wasting 8 hours straight and having nothing to show for it. During matches, I was mad with rage at my teammates, as I flammed them for not doing well enough. When I finally got off Valorant I realized I was mad with myself even more so for being a worthless human being that couldn’t even achieve anything in a virtual game after spending the whole day on it. At this point, I slammed my table as hard as I could and paced around my room as I verbally hurled insults at myself. I felt like the only thing I could do to change how I was feeling was to submerge myself in a cold shower so that it would hopefully cool me off.
Luckily it did. I felt fewer feelings of self-hatred and came out of the shower with a game plan. I told myself “I’m going to take a break from Valorant to focus on what will truly benefit me in life”. That marked the beginning of my Valorant addiction recovery journey. I still came back to Valorant after 1 week but slowly after a few months, my playtime significantly reduced after each play-time. I can happily say that for 5 months now I have been Valorant-free. I hope my story can inspire somebody that was similar to how I was back then, and can hopefully motivate someone to quit or at least reduce their play-time to fit in more life-changing activities.
I created a YouTube video that details the exact signs I noticed when I had a Valorant addiction and I believe it will benefit anyone who plays Valorant every day.
Give it a watch :)