Gaming giant Riot Games has recently admitted to a blunder it committed in one of its video games Valorant.

Riot Games said agent Viper had her Smoke uptime reduced in patch 7.09 last October. Although not many players have noticed the nerf, Riot Games admitted that the update was applied five months early.

A team-based first-person shooter, Valorant is one of the most watched and played Esports titles in the world. Still, despite its vast team of developers, Riot Games committed a major mistake in one of its patches.

"During our most recent balance pass, we discovered that Viper's smoke uptime is shortened in-game," Riot Games announced.

"This is due to an update that had unintentionally shipped in 7.09 resulting in reduced smoke duration and cooldown after deactivating Viper's smoke. While we had not meant for these to go out, they are a rough preview of some upcoming updates we now have set for Patch 8.08."

Viper is one of the most played agents in the game and is part of the current Valorant meta.

Also one of the pioneer characters of the game, Viper is a controller that blocks sight and drains the health points of opponents when in her poison smoke.

The nerf, however, did little to Viper's popularity. In fact, Viper enjoyed the highest pick rate at the recently concluded Valorant Champions Tour: Masters Madrid 2024 where eight teams fought for the lion's share of the $500,000 prize pool.