Riot shuts down Valorant custom lobbies and shooting range due to matchmaking issues

Riot Games has taken the odd decision to shut down practice mode and custom games from Valorant amid issues impacting matchmaking queues to start Episode 4.

With the launch of a new Episode combined with massive weapon and map changes on top of the release of a new Agent, Neon, the game seem poised to receive a healthy influx of players jumping into unrated, ranked, and all the other multiplayer modes the game offers.

It seems that users are sticking to refining their aim in order to start Episode 4 Act 1 with the right foot, making things slower for those queuing up straight into matches.

Riot shuts down practice and shooting range

Via social media, the Valorant devs mentioned that they were disabling custom games as well as the shooting range to aid with issues affecting matchmaking queues.

Now, don't confuse custom games with lobbies, as they are still accessible at the moment of writing. In fact, the Riot server status website only lists practice mode and shooting range as the two disabled modes.

There are so many of you in the Shooting Range and custom games that it's actually negatively impacting matchmaking queues.

We're going to temporarily disable those two modes (for NA/BR/LATAM regions) to help clear some room.

— VALORANT (@PlayVALORANT) January 12, 2022

Confusion stems from wording utilised in Riot's social media announcement, but rest assured all lobbies are functional at the moment of writing.

When is shooting range coming back online?

Riot didn't share any ETA when it comes to shooting range and practice mode. So players that are looking to warm up against bots only option is to do so in casual game modes like Deathmatch or Escalation against other players. 

We will update this page accordingly to let you know when both practice and shooting range are back online.

As a reminder, this is not the only issue affecting Valorant at the moment, albeit it's the biggest one. There's also a leaderboard bug listed on the server status page.

"We're aware of an issue that is affecting the display of various leaderboard standings. We're currently working on a fix."

• Read more: Riot to target Valorant insta-lockers by introducing cascading Agent select
  

Featured image courtesy of Riot Games.