I didnt realize my game updated yesterday and was unable to start it. All I got was a loading cursor for a minute followed by a critical error that requires the process to be termianted.

After going though essentially every option there is including reinstalling, turns out the issue is RTSS. Even just having it running in the background with Valorant explicitly excluded, the game will not start anymore.

So if you use RTSS and your game doesnt start anymore try closing it.

Edit: It seems like the latest RTSS version that ships with MSI Afterburner fixes it: https://download.msi.com/uti_exe/vga/MSIAfterburnerSetup.zip