Popularity of Valorant: What attracts new players
The world of eSports is not often subject to much change. The most popular disciplines have been on the market for almost a decade and not every newcomer manages to displace them. Today we’ll try to find out what attracts newcomers to the game from Riot Games – Valorant.
Game Overview
Valorant (Project A) is a free-to-play multiplayer PC shooter from Riot Games designed to compete with Overwatch, Paladins, Rainbow Six and Counter-Strike. But judging by the gameplay trailers, it’s the latter that has more similarities.
The game is in the hands of the experienced company that created the most popular eSports discipline, League of Legends. The new discipline to bet Valorant from the well-known developer immediately attracted attention not only from streamers, but also from the organizers.
The full release of Valorant came out in June, although testing had started earlier. What kind of success did the game achieve? Was it able to establish itself in a crowded industry?
Gameplay
Players only use firearms. Users can purchase equipment, weapons and abilities at the start of a match, or save up to buy more powerful ones later.
The emphasis in map design is not on beauty but on usability. There is only one mode here so far in the form of searching and laying bombs in a 5 on 5 formats.
The roles of attackers/defenders switch periodically, and the team that successfully completes 13 of the 24 rounds wins. As for shooting, Riot says: “Shooting in Valorant is very precise and leaves no room for mistakes. We want you to win by relying solely on your skill and strategy.”
Player success metrics – viewership figures on Twitch
It has become known which categories were the most popular on Twitch between July and September 2021. Valorant took fourth place, generating more than 250 million hours of viewing in three months. The statistics were provided by The Esports Observer.
Valorant is steadily gaining up to 80-100 thousand viewers through popular streamers including Zedd, Aceu, Pokimane, and 10+ thousand viewers through a number of other streamers.
Significantly influencing the streamer’s success is the participation of cyber athletes at the level of Hiko, Jerax, and Shroud. A third character managed to draw 260,000 viewers – not every tournament draws such figures. The discipline is also popular in eSports betting at https://vulkan.bet/en/esports/live-matches.
Just Chatting and GTA V are in the lead – viewers have spent over 710 million and 430 million hours watching the broadcasts in these categories respectively. League of Legends was third in the ranking with over 379 million hours of viewing. Apex Legends, the battle royale, closed out the top five with more than 208 million hours of viewing.
Valorant vs CS: GO
The Counter-Strike: Global Offensive numbers on Twitch aren’t so clear-cut either. Thanks to the well-known tag tournaments, Counter-Strike can garner at least 400,000 viewers. But all together, regular streamers will scrape together 40-60 thousand stable online per day according to the statistics.