Valorant players, your prayers may have finally been answered – unless you’re a Neon main, that is.
While players have been calling for Neon nerfs for several weeks, Riot Games has instead officially removed Neon from Valorant as a result of a critical bug involving one of her abilities.
This removal of Neon is temporary, but the devs have confirmed that she won’t be returning to the roster until the Valorant 12.09 patch.
Additionally, Riot has also reassured players that the Valorant 12.09 update will also introduce some nerfs to the Filipino Duelist to address the community’s concerns regarding her kit.
Neon Disabled From Valorant Queues
As confirmed by Riot, Neon has been temporarily removed from Valorant due to a graphics exploit involving her Fast Lane ability.
Here’s the official statement from the dev team:
“We recently discovered a graphics exploit with Neon’s Fast Lane ability that affects competitive integrity, so we’re disabling her on PC from now until Patch 12.09 to fix the bug.
We’ve also been working on some Neon changes for a while to address parts of her kit that are over-tuned, which will go live when she returns in 12.09.”
Lastly, the devs also announced that they’ll shed further light on the upcoming Neon changes tomorrow.
While the majority of the Valorant community has celebrated Neon’s temporary removal from the game, not everyone is happy with Riot’s decision. Some players, and especially Neon one-tricks, have raised concerns over Riot completely disabling the Agent instead of simply fixing the exploit first and addressing balance changes later.
Note that this isn’t the first time an Agent has been completely removed from Valorant as a result of game-breaking exploits. Previously, we’ve seen Agents like Tejo, Reyna, and Omen getting temporarily disabled from the Valorant queues for similar bugs.
When Will Neon Return to Valorant?
Neon will return to Valorant with the game’s 12.09 update, which is scheduled to hit the live servers on May 13, 2026.
