Is Valorant Just a Fad?

Valorant had some early success, but its viewership count proves it lacks staying power. | Image: Ev. Safronov/shutterstock.com

• Riot Games’ Valorant was incredibly popular on Twitch during its closed beta.
• Since it was released, the game has dropped an enormous amount of viewers.
• Is this a sign that the game’s popularity was a fad?

Not so long ago, everyone was talking about Valorant. During the closed beta, you were lucky if you could get access to the game. Meanwhile, viewers managed to watch 148.7 million hours of people streaming the game in a single week.

Since the game was fully released, things haven’t been going so well. In the first weak since launch, viewership figures are nowhere near what they were during the beta.

It’s starting to look like Valorant may have been a bit of a fad.

Valorant Is Sinking Fast

The drop in viewership has been overwhelming. When the beta first dropped, everyone was clamoring for a key. Streams of the game were all the rage. You basically couldn’t go anywhere online without hearing about Valorant.

That very much appears to have changed. Most of the streams on Twitch are lucky to breach 2,000 viewers. Such a vast dropoff makes Valorant look like a fad–more of a flash in the pan than a raging success.

Of course, that drop in numbers isn’t necessarily represented in the game’s actual player count. Maybe people are just watching less of the game, and playing more. Either way, it doesn’t look good from an outside perspective.

Will The Game Last?

Answering the question of how long Valorant will stay relevant is difficult. Gamers are still playing online shooters that have been out for two decades. Yet some games are dropped almost as soon as they come out.

Valorant hasn’t completely sunk yet. There’s still a chance that the game could bounce back. As long as people keep playing, the game will stay relevant in people’s minds.

But there could be other reasons why people aren’t playing or watching Valorant. The anti-cheat system the game installs is one of the most intrusive options available, something that stopped a lot of people from wanting to install the game at all.

Then again, that shouldn’t necessarily affect viewers of the game. So maybe things aren’t going to go well for Riot’s shooter after all.

Twitch Valorant

William Worrall

William Worrall is a professional writer based out of the UK who has been writing about video and tabletop games for over a decade and has covered industry events such as EGX and UKGE. Contact him at [email protected], see his LinkedIn profile here.

[email protected] @mizushinzui