Tomorrow is my 19th birthday and I felt like I should take some time to thank the Valorant community and the developers for making such a awesome game. Iam a player from Asia (Singapore 1 server), I have been playing since episode 1 act 2 and Iam currently bronze 3 and lvl 231. However I stopped thinking about the ranks a lot along time ago and started enjoying the game. The reason I want to thank this game is that I met a lot of wonderful people along the way and its all thanks to this game. I want to mention a few,

Birdie - He's from my country (Sri Lanka) 22 yrs old and it surprised me because Sri Lankan Valorant players are quite rare to find and he is THE most kindest person I have ever encountered. This guy has multiple skins for every gun and the first thing he does when the round start is buy everyone that comes near him skins. I played this game for a long time and I know almost no one likes to give skins to others simply because it's just a hassle. But he is the only person I met that asks every round that "what skin you guys want". I once told him that "you're just way too kind to others" and he replied that when he was young and played other games, no one would give him skins to try and that was the reason that he brought skins, just so he can drop others... After he said that my heart just melted. Iam not telling he is kind for the sole reason of him dropping skins to me, but from the way he talks and acts I can tell he is a good person irl too. We ended becoming real good friends.

Hellcalibus - We didn't play together much as the format of the game was not his cup of tea. I did not have a single skin in the game and I prolly wont for the next couple years as my parents are very skeptical about online transactions, especially cuz its a game. I wanted the Velocity karambit so badly but had no way to buy it whatsoever and I really hated to ask and trouble others because I thought I might come out being annoying. I told him about how I wanted it but there was no way for me to buy and in the end he offered me to buy the bp with his card as he knew how much I was dedicated to the game and how much I loved the skins. Thanks to this guy I can now happily flip the karambit around.

Zap - I remember the very first sentence he said. He said "you guys can pick whatever you like I can fill in". Although later I heard many ppl say this, that was the first guy I heard say that. That too with a very friendly tone that I immediately knew he was a kind guy. One day I had a really bad game and the enemy team and some of my teammates kept flaming me. I think we can all relate to this one. I kept quiet that game and because I didn't talk back to them it started to hurt even more. Zap noticed this from the way I commed and told me "just ignore them and don't worry, if they keep continuing I'll step up for you".. That ryt there gave me hope that good ppl also exist in this world. He never blames a bad play but instead advice how you can avoid that next time and always says "nice try" even if it was not.

This is just a fraction of good people that I met. What Iam trying to point out is that I know this game is identified as having a toxic community, but I know for a fact that there are a lot of kind players and they are being overlooked by people. I started a server for Asian region players on January this year called "The Syndicates" and I wanted it to be a place for hard stuck low elo players like me that just wants to have fun playing in a non toxic, friendly environment. In such a short time over 60 players joined. This is honestly the best birthday gift I could have ever asked for as I had the most fun I ever had in the game these last few weeks because unlike solo queue these players are willing to communicate with me on discord. Finally Iam really glad I played this game because the feeling of your teammates spectating you, hyping you up, complimenting after getting a kill, potentially ace' ing and finally blasting out of happiness after clutching the round, that feeling never gets old to me. THANK YOU RIOT FOR MAKING SUCH A AWESOME GAME AND THANK YOU MY FELLOW GAMERS.