Rejoice, Agents! One of the VALORANT community’s most divisive maps is finally being removed from the competitive map pool in the upcoming Patch 9.08.
Pearl Returns and Lotus Departs | VALORANT State of the Maps
Riot Games has announced that Patch 9.08 will see an update to its competitive map rotation with a host of changes, including the removal of Icebox and Lotus. As a replacement, the developers will be bringing back Pearl and Split to VALORANT’s competitive pool, but there will be no design updates to either map.
"As you saw earlier this year with Haven, maps that come into rotation don't always require design changes," lead producer Al Robles wrote in the patch notes. "I want to emphasize that we only make changes to maps that are no longer in rotation when there is an opportunity to improve the player experience. Map pools are updated with the intent of changing the overall variety of the pool."
While the patch does include some interesting developments, the community is celebrating the removal of Icebox from the competitive pool after the map received a lot of criticism from the general player base.
