In 2021, being an avid VALORANT player with a potato for a laptop, I was really annoyed by the need to launch the game and wait five minutes for it to startup, just so I could check my in-game store if any of my favorite skins were on sale. After many weeks of this, I realized it would be a fun challenge to build a tool that would scan my inventory and notify me if any of my favorite skins were on sale.

Unfortunately, VALORANT's in-game store API was not public, so I had to get creative. After lots of network monitoring, reverse engineering, and scouring for third-party documentation, I found all the necessary authorization and store retrieval endpoints I would require to build an automated scanner. So, after a few days of work, I scraped images of dozens of skins, created an API to handle the authorization and store retrieval, and built a React web application and React Native application to allow anyone to login with their VALORANT credentials and easily scan their store.

Posting my RN app on the r/VALORANT subreddit, I realized my concern was not unique, and over 80,000 people shared their interest before the VALORANT team took down my post for using undocumented APIs. Over the next few months, I cut out my RN app and focused on improving my web application— which was used on the daily by hundreds of people.