The Golden State Valkyries, the WNBA’s newest expansion team, just debuted this year. While their entry into the league proved exciting, the NBA 2K25 players can feel their absence from the game’s roster.
However, the reason for their absence isn’t due to oversight or lack of interest, but rather bad timing, logistics, and limitations in game development itself.
Timing Of Team Formation
The Valkyries were officially introduced to the public as the WNBA’s 13th franchise on Oct. 5, 2023. They were slated to begin playing in 2025, with all of their branding, including the team name and logo, unveiled on May 14, 2024.
With the 2024 WNBA Expansion Draft on Dec. 6, 2024, the team began constructing its roster and selected 11 players to form the squad’s solid foundation. However, when comparing this timing to the development stages of NBA 2K25, the roster was already significantly behind. As of late 2024, the game must have been in the final stages of development or completed, leaving significant challenges for the developers to incorporate a new team.
Development for sports games, such as the NBA 2K franchise, works on strict schedules. The sheer detail you see in the game isn’t just the work of a couple of days, but requires a significant amount of time to be invested.
The addition of new teams requires a lot of technical work, such as designing team logos, uniforms, arenas, accurate player models, and character builds. These go through multiple stages until they are fully polished and finalized.
Since the finalization of the Valkyrie roster and branding was quite late, developer Visual Concepts couldn’t just add them to the game overnight without delaying the NBA 2K25 release.
Community Workarounds
Although the Valkyries aren’t officially available, dedicated NBA fans have explored some ways to add them in NBA 2K25. Using the in-game customization options, fans have recreated team logos and uniforms to simulate their presence. While these custom approaches lack the official player likeness and authenticity, they’re still enough to satisfy curiosity.
Will The Golden State Valkyries Be Added In The Future?
Their absence isn’t going to be permanent. Judging by the Valkyries’ active participation in the 2025 WNBA season and the constant growth in fan numbers, I’m confident in their appearance in future installments such as NBA 2K26. The team’s addition will finally let sports gamers experience the official roster and enhance the game’s representation of the WNBA.
