The Riot-made Valorant app called Recon Bolt
The Riot-made Valorant app called Recon Bolt gives players an early advantage in character selection by letting them lock-in characters on their phones. However, Riot has announced that they will be shutting down the app.
Recon Bolt was created by Julian Dunskus, a Swiss developer who was frustrated by Valorant's character selection process. The app has been live since at least October 2022 and has amassed over 338,000 downloads and around 88,000 monthly users, according to Apptopia.
Dunskus received a cease and desist notice from Riot, indicating that legal action would be taken if he did not shut down the app. As a result, Dunskus has decided to shut down Recon Bolt.
The app will go offline on July 20, just two days before Valorant's next major patch. It's unclear at this point what this means for Valorant's character selection process, although Riot has stated that they will be rolling out a temporary solution for in-game character selection.
Dunskus is taking the news in stride and is now looking for a "real" job as an iOS developer.
"I've been developing this app for months," Dunskus says. "I've had a lot of fun, learned a lot, and made a lot of money. I guess this is the end of this story. I hope everyone gets to lock in their favorite character on launch day."
The article was originally published on October 20, 2022 and has since been updated with comments from Dunskus and app usage figures.
