Valorant Beta Launches to Over 1.5 Million Twitch Viewers

Riot Games just launched its closed beta for Valorant this week, the tactical, competitive shooter [...]

By Tanner Dedmon

Riot Games just launched its closed beta for Valorant this week, the tactical, competitive shooter that's already reached some impressive numbers on Twitch during its launch day. With people flocking to Twitch to see what the game is like and to hopefully collect some beta keys to check out the game themselves, the new game has already amassed over 1.5 million players on the streaming platform. The game's only been previewed by Riot Games and professional players and streamers up until now, so this closed beta launch is the first opportunity for players to go hands on with Valorant since its announcement last year.

A first-person shooter likened to Counter-Strike: Global Offensive where players choose characters to play as who have their own unique abilities, Valorant is the first game of its kind that the League of Legends developer has worked on. Reactions to the game have been largely positive so far from the streamers and pros who've had more time with it than others, but even if you're not sold on the game yet, the Twitch viewership numbers make it evident that people want to know more about the game.

Head to the Twitch directory for the game now and you'll see a number of viewers that games usually only hit during events like this with over 1.5 million people currently watching Valorant streams. A large part of that is likely people hoping to get access to the beta through Twitch drops which means may players probably have multiple streamers' channels open at once in hopes of getting beta access.

That may inflate the number of overall viewers, but when you look at individual streamers' channels and how many people are watching them, the interest is still evident. Retired Counter-Strike player summit1g, for example, currently has over 150,000 viewers watching him play the closed Valorant beta, an impressive number for any channel let alone one that belongs to an individual. The streamer and others have been previewing their time with Valorant from private tests before being able to go live with the game alongside other closed beta players this week.

The release of those previews from streamers drew similarly large numbers on Twitch when they first came to the streaming platform last week, though the numbers still weren't as high as they were today. The Twitch viewership has been holding strong during the opening hours of the closed beta, so it's worth keeping an eye on to see how high it can climb throughout the day.

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