Riot Games has rewritten its community competition guidelines for VALORANT, scrapping a layered licensing system that had governed third-party tournaments for several years. The update, announced June 19, replaces a patchwork of regional restrictions with a single global framework — and eliminates some of the most contentious limits that independent organizers have long complained about. For grassroots organizers, the headline change is simple: the financial ceilings are gone. Prize pool caps, entry-fee limits, sponsorship revenue caps, and spectator-fee restrictions have all been removed. In practical terms, a community tournament can now scale to whatever size its organizer can build — without needing Riot's blessing to do it.
A Unified Global Structure
Under the old guidelines, Riot operated a tiered licensing model with rules that varied by region and by the scope of the event. The revamped framework collapses that into one set of rules applied across all supported regions and languages, stripping out the ambiguity that came with navigating different regional policies. Organizers still need to submit a visibility form before running an event — reachable via the code VALevent on Riot's official guidelines page — but in most cases they can proceed without waiting for a response. Riot frames the form as a way to keep tabs on the ecosystem, lend support to organizers, catch bad actors, and occasionally spotlight standout events. It functions as a heads-up, not a permission slip.
What Was Cut
Beyond the financial caps, Riot has lifted restrictions on how long events can run and loosened the rules around naming and branding. Streaming is now allowed on any online platform, and organizers can charge spectator fees or put broadcasts behind a paywall. The one broadcast avenue still closed off is traditional linear television. Organizers also can't lean on official Valorant Champions Tour branding — words like "Masters" or "Champions" are off the table for event names, and nobody can present their event as an officially Riot-sanctioned competition.
Sponsorship: The Restricted List Remains
Dropping the revenue caps doesn't mean the sponsor side is a free-for-all. Riot's updated roster of off-limits sponsor categories is still long. Vice-adjacent businesses dominate it: tobacco, alcohol, firearms, and adult content are all barred, as are prescription drugs and CBD. The entire gambling bucket — casinos, sportsbooks, fantasy esports platforms, and other betting operators — remains prohibited. So do cryptocurrency and NFT ventures, sellers of counterfeit virtual items, and partisan entities such as political campaigns and politically-aligned charities. A handful of organization types are shut out of running events under the guidelines altogether, including government bodies, professional teams and players bound by separate Riot agreements, streaming and broadcast platforms, and corporate brands that aren't established tournament organizers.
Content Rights
One clause worth flagging for organizers who produce their own broadcasts: Riot keeps a royalty-free, non-exclusive license to use event content for promotional purposes — and it doesn't have to notify organizers or credit them when it does. Anyone planning a large production should read the full guidelines rather than rely on a summary. The overhaul signals a clear shift in how Riot wants to relate to the third-party VALORANT scene — less regulatory body, more silent partner. Removing the financial caps in particular addresses a long-standing tension between community organizers trying to build sustainable events and a policy framework that capped their upside. Whether the new guidelines translate into a more active grassroots circuit will depend on how organizers respond, but the structural barriers that previously limited their ambition are, at minimum, no longer written into the rules.
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