This despite Valorant being on closed beta stage
Graphics by Tricia Guevara
Fans of Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (CS:GO) and Overwatch are in for a treat with Valorant, Riot Games’ new free-to-play tactical first person shooter (FPS) PC game.
Formerly known as Project A, the 5v5 character-based tactical shooter game similar to CS:GO in terms of shooting controls and Overwatch with its characters’ unique abilities has won the hearts of streamers and viewers even while still on closed beta stage.
The game however is set to be released this summer (though no official dates have been announced yet). Currently, only select players in Europe, North America, Turkey, and Russia are given access to the beta key, and while esports fans have only experienced the game through streamers, as of writing, Valorant already has a 2.3 million following on Twitch with around 368,000 viewers.
The game has since become Riot Games’ first FPS game on Twitch to break the “single-day hours watched record in a single game category” at 34 million hours while hitting a peak concurrent viewer total of 1.7 million, which is second only to the 2019 League of Legends World Championship.
One of the driving forces behind its record-breaking launch was the fact that players had to watch specific streams in order to access the beta key from Riot Games. Some of the big names who participated were Jaryd “summit1g” Lazar, Timothy “TimTheTatman” Betar, Félix “xQc” Lengyel, Imane “Pokimane” Anys, and Guy “Dr Disrespect” Beahm.
Valorant pits two teams of five with the objective of planting a bomb or “spike” in the opposing team’s territory in a best-of-25 format with the first team to win 13 rounds winning the game. As a character shooter game, the player or agent you pick makes a difference. Critics have likened the game to mental chess where players need to make the most out of the abilities of their chosen characters.
But due to its popularity, there have been some issues regarding fake beta key access through malicious codes by hackers. Following this, fans suspected that the anti-cheat software released by Riot Games was malware that hacks player data. Riot Games’ anti-cheat lead Paul Chamberlain assured gamers via Reddit that the new anti-cheat system, Vanguard, is not spyware but one designed to get rid of cheaters in the game.
If you want to see how pro-level players compete in Valorant, ESPN is currently hosting an invitational tournament on its Twitch channel composed of eight teams with big names in esports including Rainbow Six: Siege champion Troy “Canadian” Jaroslawski, CS:GO champ Tyler “Skadoodle” Latham, and Fortnite World Cup runner-up Harrison “Psalm” Chang.