You’ve got the squad in Discord. Everyone is hyped. You hit that "Update" button, ready to see the new Agent or check out the latest map rework, and then it happens. The progress bar crawls. It hits 0.1 KB/s. It stays there. Honestly, it’s enough to make you want to alt-F4 out of life.
But why does Valorant update so slow when your gigabit internet is clearly working fine for everything else?
It’s not usually your internet. Seriously. You can run a speed test and see 500 Mbps, but the Riot Client will still treat your update like it’s being delivered by a carrier pigeon. The reality is a mix of how Riot handles file compression, your hardware’s "write" speed, and some weirdly specific software conflicts that have haunted this game since 2021.
The Secret "Install" Phase Nobody Tells You About
Most people think a game update is just a download. You grab files from a server, and they land on your computer. Simple, right?
With Valorant, the Riot Client is basically doing surgery on your files while it downloads. It’s a "simultaneous download and install" process. The client pulls a tiny chunk of data, uncompresses it, and then writes it to your drive. If your disk is busy writing that chunk, the "download" speed on the display will drop to zero or 0.1 KB/s.
It’s not stuck; it’s just busy.
If you’re still running Valorant on an old-school Hard Disk Drive (HDD), this is your bottleneck. HDDs use spinning platters. They are slow. When the game tries to reorganize 30GB of data on a mechanical drive, it’s going to take forever. Switching to a Solid State Drive (SSD) is the single biggest "fix" for this. Even a cheap SATA SSD will outrun a 7200 RPM hard drive by miles.
Windows Defender and The "0.1 KB/s" Bug
Sometimes, the slowness is because your computer thinks the update is a threat. Windows Defender or your third-party antivirus (looking at you, Avast and McAfee) might be scanning every single chunk the Riot Client tries to write.
Imagine trying to build a Lego set, but someone has to inspect every single brick before you can snap it in. That’s what’s happening.
You’ve gotta whitelist the Riot Client.
- Go to your Firewall and Network Protection settings.
- Find Allow an app through firewall.
- Make sure Riot Client and Valorant are checked for both Private and Public networks.
Surprisingly, some users have found that simply minimizing the client makes it faster. It sounds like a myth, but it reduces the CPU load used to render the UI, letting more juice go toward the actual file patching.
Discord and Bandwidth Hogging
We all use Discord. It’s the backbone of the tactical shooter experience. But Discord is surprisingly heavy on your network and CPU. There is a documented glitch where having Discord open—especially if it’s actively sharing a screen or sitting in a voice channel—throttles the Riot Client.
Basically, they fight for the same resources.
Try closing Discord completely. Not just hitting the 'X', but actually killing it in the Task Manager. You might see that 0.1 KB/s jump back up to 20 MB/s instantly. It’s weird, but it works for a huge chunk of the community.
Technical Hurdles and Server Loads
Don't forget the obvious: Patch Day. When a major update like the 12.00 Breeze rework drops, millions of people are hitting Riot’s Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) at the same time. Even Riot’s massive infrastructure can sweat under that much pressure.
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If the servers are slammed, your ISP might also be "throttling" the traffic. Some ISPs see a massive, sustained download from a gaming server and flag it as low priority compared to, say, a Zoom call or Netflix stream.
Quick Fixes That Actually Work
If you're staring at a progress bar that hasn't moved since 2025, try these specific steps:
- Change Priority: Open Task Manager, go to the Details tab, find
RiotClientServices.exe, right-click it, and set the priority to High. This tells Windows to stop worrying about background Chrome tabs and focus on the game. - The Pause/Resume Trick: This is the "have you tried turning it off and on again" of Valorant. Pause the update, wait 10 seconds, and hit resume. It can force the client to find a new, less congested server node.
- DNS Swap: Sometimes your ISP's default DNS is just trash. Switching to Google's DNS ($8.8.8.8$ and $8.8.4.4$) or Cloudflare ($1.1.1.1$) can resolve the "preparing" or "calculating" phase much faster.
- Flush DNS: Open Command Prompt as admin and type
ipconfig /flushdns. It clears out the cobwebs in your connection.
Why Some Updates Are "Invisible"
You might notice an update that says it's 20GB, but your total game size doesn't change. This happened during the 11.02 patch cycle. Riot was essentially swapping out old engine files for new ones.
The "slowness" here isn't the download; it's your computer deleting the old stuff and replacing it with the new stuff. It’s a deep-level reorganization of the game's architecture.
If you have less than 30GB of free space on your drive, the client will struggle. It needs "scratch space" to move files around during the update. If your drive is red-lining on capacity, the update speed will plummet because the computer is playing a high-stakes game of Tetris with your storage.
What to Do Next
If you've tried the firewall and the task manager tweaks and it's still crawling, check your drive health. A failing SSD or a fragmented HDD will make every Valorant update a nightmare.
Move the game to your fastest drive. Ensure you have at least 50GB of breathing room on that drive. And honestly, if a patch is truly stuck at 0% for more than twenty minutes, a clean reinstall is often faster than waiting for the client to fix its own internal logic.
Stop checking the speed every five seconds. Minimize the client, go grab a snack, and let the "simultaneous install" do its thing. It’ll get there. Eventually.