Valorant (stylized as VALORANT) is a free-to-play FPS game developed and published by Riot Games, for Microsoft Windows.
Launched in 2020, the game has amassed quite a fanbase and sees new players joining in every day. Even I have put countless hours, shooting and using my agents’ abilities in the game.
VALORANT is being regularly updated by Riot Games, to fix more bugs and bring new features.
The game itself isn’t very heavy and doesn’t need 100GB downloads like COD. However, for games with limited storage, and a metered internet connection, downloading the game again if you run out of storage or don’t have it installed can be quite frustrating.
So we have come up with a definitive guide to moving Valorant from one drive on your PC to another drive or even another computer. This way you’ll free up some storage and not have to worry about wasting your internet connection.
In the words of Kay/O, “Let’s do this!”
Move Valorant to Another Folder on The Same PC
If you are running out of storage on your drive and need to move the game to another partition to free up space, you can follow this method.
Step 1: Navigate to the drive where you installed Valorant and the Riot app.
Step 2: Cut the “Valorant” and “Riot Client” folders and paste them into the drive you want to move the files to.
Step 3: Open “C:\” partition.
Step 4: Make sure the hidden files and folders are visible.
Step 5: Open the “ProgramData” folder and navigate to Riot Games.
Step 6: Open the file “RiotClientInstalls.json” with notepad.
Step 7: Replace the path here with the new path (the path to the drive you moved the Valorant and Riot Client to) and save the file.
Step 8: Go to the “Metadata” folder in the “Riot Games” folder in C:\ProgramData.
Step 9: Open the folder “valorant.live”.
Step 10: In there, open the file “valorant.live.product_settings.yaml” with notepad.
Step 11: Modify the lines “product_install_full_path” and “product_install_root” with the new modified path, then save the file.
Step 12: Now restart your PC and launch Valorant.
Copy Valorant to Another PC
These steps apply if you’re trying to move Valorant from your old PC to your new one, or even sharing the game to your friend. You will need an active internet connection however to download some basic files. These files should be less than 100MB so you won’t lose data in the process.
Copying Valorant from Source PC
Step 1: Find the installation file on the PC where Valorant is installed, by right-clicking the Valorant icon on the desktop, then selecting the location of the selected file.
Step 2: You will go to the “C:/Riot Games/Riot Client“.
Step 3: Before moving, first click on the Riot Games folder and you’ll see there are two folders, Riot Client and VALORANT.
Step 4: Copy the Valorant folder.
Step 5: Paste the Valorant folder onto an external hard drive or another storage medium, at least 16 GB.
The first step is done. Now we will connect the external storage to the PC we have to move the game to and proceed.
Installing Valorant on Target PC
Step 1: Before you transfer the game, you must download the Riot client.
The client file is only about 65MB.
Step 2: Open the Riot client app, and click the option to specify the installation director
It’s set to C:\ but you can change the installation folder here.
Step 3: Click install.
You will see the game login screen, at the bottom you can see the game download in progress.
Step 4: After about 1%, abort the installation and make sure the installer is not running.
Step 5: Copy the Valorant game folder from the hard drive or flash drive.
Step 6: Open the Valorant game installation folder by right-clicking on the Valorant game icon and selecting the location containing the open file option.
Step 7: Paste the Valorant folder into the open folder.
Step 8: If a duplicate data pop-up appears, please click replace file and wait for it to complete.
Step 9: Open the Riot Client and it should start verifying installation instead of starting the download, and when done you can log in.
Step 10: Restart your PC to enable Vanguard and now you can start playing the game.
System Requirement to Run Valorant
The system requirements for Valorant are not too strict compared to other popular FPS titles. Riot Games made a conscious decision to make the game as optimized as possible and you can run it at 30fps on any hardware.
When you move Valorant to another PC, you need to make sure the system requirements are met before running.
The minimum specifications to run Valorant are:
- CPU: Intel i3-370M
- RAM: 4 GB
- OS: Windows 7/8/10 64-bit
- VIDEO CARD: Intel HD 3000
The recommended specifications are:
- CPU: Core i5-4460
- RAM: 8 GB
- OS: Windows 7/8/10 64-bit
- VIDEO CARD: GTX 1050 Ti 4GB
Concluding
You will still need an active internet connection to play the game. Installing updates also requires an internet connection and the game might be unplayable if you don’t update.
I hope this guide was helpful and informative to the gamers looking to move Valorant to another folder. Do share your queries in the comments.