Earlier today, Riot rolled out the Valorant 1.11 patch that makes some balance changes and tweaks, tunes the in-game economy, adds a left-handed gun model, and—this is the big one—brings in the new character Skye, the Australian forest guardian with the magical petting zoo. A few hours later, though, Riot said that it's turned into a "technical nightmare," and so the patch is being rolled back and will be redeployed next week.
We'll redeploy later in the week once we can figure out a less disruptive time for the VALORANT First Strike Qualifiers (and have a solution, obviously). If you started the Skye character contract, you won't be able to progress until we patch again. [2/2]October 27, 2020
The odd thing is that based on the comments on Twitter and in this Reddit thread, nobody is 100 percent certain why the update was rolled back. There appear to be a number of issues at hand, including one that was preventing players with AFK teammates from receiving bonus money, and streamer Steel_tv had an interesting experience with the update shortly after it went live:
Redditor Solace1k theorized that the problem could be the cumulative effect of the problems on the First Strike tournament, the first official Riot-produced Valorant tournament, which began qualifiers yesterday. "Every minor thing that affects them could be a tragedy at that level," they said, which is a valid point. It also fits with Riot's tweet about finding a "less disruptive time," although that makes me wonder why Riot would drop a big update right after the start of a showcase tourney in the first place. It's not uncommon for FPS developers to protect the integrity of the competitive community when rolling out a new balance change or content update.
Riot confirmed that theory in an emailed statement. "The instability of this patch was particularly egregious because it impacted competitive integrity, so we're rolling it back until we can fix it," a spokesperson said.
The update should be rolled back by the time you see this, and life in Valorant will have returned to its previously normal state. The 1.11 patch notes, if you'd like to see what was and could be once again, are here.
