Valorant's newest agent temporarily disabled because his ultimate is too sumptuous to handle

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Harbor's ultimate is causing inexplicable lag spikes in Valorant matches.

Artwork of the Valorant character Harbor showing him riding a motorcycle.
(Image credit: Riot Games)

Riot has temporarily disabled Harbor, Valorant's newest hero, in competitive queues after it came to light that his ultimate ability was causing dramatic lag spikes in some matches. It turns out that Harbor's ultimate—called Reckoning—is just too much for servers to handle in some spots: The enormous visual effect it triggers can make servers slow to a crawl, as showcased in this YouTube short.

Although Harbor has been frozen out of the competitive queue for now, he's still available in less serious modes. Players in Valorant's deathmatch and quick play modes (as well as custom games) should watch out and brace for lag the very second a Harbor player looks like they're gearing up to do something gorgeous.

This isn't the first time Riot has had to put a Valorant agent on ice. Back in 2020, a patch to the game accidentally made Omen so powerful that he had to be removed from play for a full day so Riot could fix him. Riot is already at work fixing Harbor, so with any luck he'll be back and ready for action along a similar timeframe.

Harbor was added to Valorant as part of its Episode 5 Act 3 update last month before being benched for this glamorous behaviour. It's a bit of a mystery as to why his ultimate is causing such dramatic lag spikes, since the issue appears to affect server ping rather than GPU rendering. Hopefully we'll have an answer soon.

Valorant has graced our pages a fair bit recently. Not only is it one of the best FPS games you can play right now (unless you're in a match with Harbor), but the game's been making news for its tribute to a young fan who died of cancer; finally fixing a "pay-to-lose" gun skin that seemingly everyone knew about but Riot itself; and for the tale of Nishil Shah, a fan who didn't let an emergency stay in a hospital bed keep him from annihilating the opposing team in his first College Valorant match. No wonder we liked it so much in our review.

Joshua Wolens
Joshua Wolens
News Writer

One of Josh's first memories is of playing Quake 2 on the family computer when he was much too young to be doing that, and he's been irreparably game-brained ever since. His writing has been featured in Vice, Fanbyte, and the Financial Times. He'll play pretty much anything, and has written far too much on everything from visual novels to Assassin's Creed. His most profound loves are for CRPGs, immersive sims, and any game whose ambition outstrips its budget. He thinks you're all far too mean about Deus Ex: Invisible War.