VALORANT is getting a map pool update soon, but it won’t address one of the community’s most popular requests: Rotate out Ascent. As annoying as it sounds that the developers chose to ignore the playerbase, Riot Games says they did consider the request but “have decided against it” for now.

Under a Reddit post urging Riot not to remove Ascent this time around, VALORANT Product Manager Altrombe confirmed that the map will be released at some point, but not now. “It’s not a permanent part of our rotation structure,” they said.

The upcoming map rotation refresh will remove Breeze and Split, with Rift being replaced by Haven and the new map, which will be revealed during VCT Masters Shanghai. While Breeze has been heavily criticized for a while, warranting its removal from the pool, players weren’t expecting Split to take a hit. After all, it certainly doesn’t encourage an outdated meta like Ascent.

Internal decisions like map pool updates can throw VALORANT into disarray without proper explanation from the des. Altrombe acknowledged that the team could do a better job explaining the rationale behind their decisions. "I think we can talk a little bit more about map rotations and how we approach decisions like this. There's a lot of context internally behind these calls that I think we can talk to you guys about better," they said.