The Rise of VALORANT: A game that could reshape Twitch
The battle royale genre has dominated Twitch for over two years, but the upcoming shooter VALORANT from Riot Games could signal the end of an era that forever changed the streaming platform.
In 2018, Fortnite took the gaming world by storm, following in the footsteps of games like PUBG in popularizing the battle royale genre on Twitch. Since then, numerous other battle royale titles have emerged.
Fortnite’s success sparked competition from games like Call of Duty and Apex Legends. However, Fortnite’s ability to continuously adapt its game and release new cosmetic content made it nearly unbeatable in the long run.
But if anything could truly dethrone Fortnite, it would have to be a game that offers something different from the battle royale formula. With the beta testing for VALORANT set to start tomorrow, that time may have come.
On Friday, April 3, streamers were able to showcase recorded content from an exclusive early access session of the VALORANT beta. Although they couldn’t play the game live for their audience, the prerecorded gameplay generated massive viewership.
VALORANT reached a peak of 994,222 concurrent viewers on April 3, with a total of 6.55 million hours watched, according to Esports Charts. Only League of Legends exceeded five million hours watched that day.
In just one day, VALORANT surpassed the 10 million hour mark, a feat that only nine other Twitch categories achieved in the entire week. However, many games have hyped up before but only resulted in short-lived surges in viewership. What sets VALORANT apart?
First and foremost, VALORANT has the backing of Riot Games, a publishing company known for consistently attracting viewers on Twitch. Riot’s portfolio includes the immensely popular League of Legends, one of the most-watched esports worldwide.
In addition, VALORANT brings something different to Twitch. Personality-based content on the platform has been dominated by battle royale games for the past two years. VALORANT is a revamped version of CS:GO, a game that has maintained a strong viewership on Twitch despite being released in 2012.
Riot combines its experience from making League the most-watched game on Twitch with a refreshed title in the first-person shooter genre, where there hasn’t been much competition. Content creators like shroud, Summit1g, and TimTheTatman have a history of playing games similar to VALORANT, making it likely that they will continue to be influential in the game’s success.
This is in stark contrast to other recently popularized games on Twitch, like Escape from Tarkov, which quickly faded after their initial surge in viewership. Additionally, VALORANT’s potential as an esport gives it an extra boost. Riot has a successful track record in creating spectator-friendly esports, as seen with League of Legends and CS:GO, a game that shares similarities with VALORANT.
All these factors combined give VALORANT the potential to reshape Twitch viewership. By highlighting a genre that is already established in esports but lacks representation among streamers, Riot could take advantage of viewer fatigue with battle royales.
At the same time, this move is not particularly risky for Riot as the genre they are stepping into has a proven track record of success. VALORANT is already one of the most highly-anticipated games in recent memory and could potentially mark the end of battle royale dominance among content creators.
VALORANT, Twitch, battle royale, Riot Games, viewership