In June 2022, VALORANT made the decision to temporarily remove Split from the map pool. This update was made in line with the release of Patch 5.0, which also saw the introduction of the Pearl map. The team reached this decision after considering feedback from players, the amount of time that has passed since the map’s initial release, previous and upcoming planned modifications, what the map offers in the way of strategic variety, and where Pearl fits into all of it. Furthermore, this was also done to maintain a 7-map pool at all times in the Unrated and Competitive queues.
The elimination of the Split map was met with conflicting responses from VALORANT players. Thankfully, Riot Games has finally confirmed that the beloved Split map will return as part of the next map rotation in patch 6.0, which will be released in early January 2023.
Breeze and Bind will no longer be accessible in the map pool for Competitive and Unrated queues, but they will continue to be playable in Spike Rush, custom games, and any other game modes. As of now, there has been no discussion on when they will be added back into the map pool. In addition, Split will include several changes, which will be described in more depth in Patch Notes 6.0.
The VALORANT map team believed that Breeze has some room to improve in terms of Agent and team composition variety, as well as space simplicity. For Bind, the team intends to open up more action around the teleporters and possibly alter how teams execute and defend against executions at both locations. Just like Split, the developers assured that these maps would not be permanently removed.
You can learn more about the upcoming changes to the map pool for January 2023 on the official website of VALORANT.
