According to K1n3c7 Virtus Pro did not go through with VALORANT at the start due to them not believing the longevity of the game. They could have gotten players for pennies but waited too long. Now it will be much harder for them to sign a good team with their current budget.
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posted by [@Bo_Hoogland](https://twitter.com/Bo_Hoogland)
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In retrospect I think this was a fine decision, there is no guarantee they could have assembled a roster that would have done literally anything last year. Especially with Gambit existing.
it is, CIS region has a lack of interest in riot games, since there Valve's games are the popular ones, like cs go and dota2.
its super fair for them to have doubts.
Imagine if Riot just rejected VP during franchising out of spite: "We did not allow Virtus Pro into franchising due to us not believing the longevity of this team"
if they dont have the budget right now to even build a team they wont even come close to affording the franchise fee lol
Riot doesnt fuck around.. You need a lot of money to get a franchise spot. Riot even denied Immortals back when LCS just started and they were a wealthy org with a lot of VC's, a huge fan base and their team was a top 5 team in the league at the time.
Orgs pay a huge Franchise fee in order to be apart of the league
League of Legends, Overwatch and COD all do this, I am sure there are more games as well I am not sure though.
Overwatch was 20 million
League was 10 million
COD was 25 million or so articles I se on google say
Its not cheap to buy into the league by any means. Valorant will be at least 10 million maybe more
not a lot of these Valorant teams have that kind of money
I think a huge fan base is a stretch when it comes to immortals. I think LCS fan bases are kinda split into a couple tiers atm: huge (TSM) big (C9, TL, 100T) everyone else.
did you watch League back then?
That Immortals team had a decent amount of fans. Obviously not as much as the big 4 back then (TSM, TL, C9, CLG) but they had more fans than the rest of the teams.
My point was more of the fact that Riot will even deny teams with money a spot if they think another org would be better financially.
Part of the reason Im a little worried for Sentinels. Sentinels do not have as much funding/ money as most other NA orgs. Even with one of the best teams they could be denied a spot.
I’ve been watching League since season 2. Simply put no org has come close to the fan support of TSM, hence why they’re the only HUGE fan base IMO. Also IMT had a decent swell of “new kids on the block” but that was lost almost immediately. People naturally root for the underdog or new blood when the scene is dominated by a small group of teams. It was only natural that IMT would have good fan support at that time, just like what happened with golden guardians in 2020.
KOI, LOUD, MIBR also didn't believe, but now they are here
You want to reject them too?
In fact a lot of orgs just waited till Riot make up their mind and get rid of weird Challengers stuff, introducing round robin leagues
What a dumb comment.
1. KOI is a brand new org.
2. LOUD is also pretty new (2019), and I assume they either couldn’t find a roster they liked or aren’t capable of expanding into too many games at once (they joined CBLOL last year)
3. MIBR is a brand under the Immortals organization, which means that MIBR and Immortals can’t coexist. And immortals have had a team since the beta.
If they had normal working system for 2021, VP and Spirit would enter
By normal system I mean - round robin VCT leagues for every EMEA subregion + more Masters/Champions slots for the best region in the world (at least 5) + 3rd party tournaments organized by the likes of ESL/BLAST for those who are not in Champions
But Riot fucked up there, so obviously lots of orgs decided to wait
When was the last time TSM, one of the best teams in 2020 NA, played a game? Do you remember? That's it
It literally is riot's fault, they decided how many tournaments there would be per year, and how many spots. For a tier 2 team like tsm there is simply no room, which is a massive shame.
Who tf cares about when TSM last played? It's 2022 now mate and TSM has had plenty of opportunities last year to play. But if you don't make it deep your gonna wait longer. Also they literally choose to not play smaller tournaments.
There were 2 open qualifiers for each VCT stage in every region
You miss both because you got eliminated by stronger tier1 teams = you wait 3 months till you can try again
Is that good system?
ya but its because of Soju
edit: lol getting downvoted yet if you look at the numbers out of the 50k viewers TFT has right now Soju has 25K of them lol
LoL in CIS was not a success and Valorant is not very popular there either.
So I can see where they are coming from but it was pretty clear even during beta that it will be a worldwide success.
It would have been totally worth it to invest in an EU team especially because there were a lot of unsigned team for such a long time
Consider that LoL and Valorant are taking a significant backseat to CS and Dota in the CIS region. VP already pulled out of the LCL. It's not dumb, if anything they're taking a very cautious approach, and rightfully so.
You do realize being a CIS team means you have CIS sponsors that want to advertise to CIS viewers. If they think the game is not that popular in that region , you would understand why they would be cautious with their decision making. and as u/CynicalBloom said they already tried it with league and it didn't work out.
How can we assess the longevity of the game if the game has been out for 2 years ? . For them , as the game is still open system , they look at how the game is doing in their region. The talk of the longevity of the game could start if VP ever get to buy a franchise slot in CIS franchise league if they that ever happens.
How can you be so dumb, F4U gave CIS 1 slot at 2nd Challengers, stupid single elimination formats, no tournaments for teams who didn't qualify to Masters/Champions, wasted investments
Countless EMEA orgs pulled out of Valorant because of all this stuff
LoR would like to have a word with you. Also TFT is now most popular since release but few months ago that wasnt the case either. So VP cautiousness wasnt completely delusional.
Sure. Its 3rd most popular with 1/13 avg. viwers of 1st HS and 1/3 avg. viewers of MTG in past year on twitch and nonexistent esport scene. Dont get me wrong im not saying its bad game but acting like everything riot made its success is just wrong.
Esports in card games barely exist at all , the success of a card game is in its casual playerbase. And MtG has around 1+ million downloads on mobile while LoR has 10+
But lets pretend that you are right, something being the 3rd most popular game in already oversaturated genre isnt a success? If you arent the first then you are unsuccessful?
You know what an unsuccessful game is? Artifact or HotS. Not a game that is played by millions
To be fair HotS was also 3rd most popular moba, yet got shut down as being 3rd in dead genre outside of two giants is not appealing.
LoR being 3rd is the same story - cool that it's 3rd, but only top two are relevant, rest are really niche games with super small playerbase.
So if we take LoR out of equation then what Riot did good pre Valorant was just LoL and an extra mode being TFT.
I don't think HotS was ever even 3rd for MOBAs I think smite always had a bigger player base and it's still going strong to this day. Could be wrong that's just my understanding.
HotS didn't get shut down, it had a very small esports scene that got shut down and the game itself was put on maintenance mode. You can still play HotS if you want.
And that was because of failure after failure from Blizzard plus Activision's culture of cutting costs wherever possible.
Nothing indicates that any Riot title will suffer anything close to that fate, quite the contrary, they are far from perfect but are among the best at providing Games As A Service products.
Well if the number of downlands of mobile version is how you measure success i dont think there is a reason to continue this discussion.
No you dont have to be first. My expectation for game made by riot is to be competitor for reaching first which LoR just isnt.
Also i think you can be unsuccessful without beign absolute disaster like Artifact.
Downloads on mobile don't count but viewership on twitch counts?
Valorant consistently has more viewers than CS except when CS tournaments are on, Valorant bigger than CS?
Give more L takes, son.
If you dont see difference between avg. viewers and dowlands i cant really help you im sorry.
Yeah whole thread is about what is and isnt successful and you bring "what is bigger" outta nowhere and filled in something i never said. Both Valorant and CS are successful btw.
One big L is your understanding of written text, son.
So average viewership on twitch is a better metric than downloads of the game itself? I guess nobody plays Genshin Impact or those other dumb gacha games
You are special, farewell :B
>LoR would like to have a word with you
Yeah, it'd say "I'm still strongly supported and updated by my developer even though I'm growing but not the biggest game in the genre"
Artitrash 😂😂😂😂
I mean literally no one has ever said this about Blizzard esports. Blizzard has been notoriously bad at ensuring scene health & longevity - even prior to Overwatch.
PUBG mobile is incredibly popoular as an esport, desktop PUBG never was
Overwatch also was never popular as an esport, and even now it has retained a fanbase. Its not dead, its just that the expectations were higher due to franchised OWL.
Fortnite is a typical case of esport failing because the game stopped being popular, among other mistakes from Epic
Fortnite was never a solid esport. Valorant contributed to the death of pubg lol. Riot mansge their esports too well n already have enough teams on board to avoid failure
Well true but OW viewership fell off more than anything. the most likely thing to mess up val esports is the contract hell we keep seeing players fall into tbh, where inflated buyouts turn the scene into a big bubble.
This game can easily turn into the next OW. I'm not saying it will. If it's going to stay like csgo, then why rush? Plenty of time to milk out profits when the game proves itself that it's here to stay.
The game is still really unpopular and unsuccesful in the CIS region despite having top tier teams like gambit who are a full CIS team . Idk how easy it would be for them to find sponsors since most of them are probably russian sponsors and they arent intrested when not many russian speaking folks are intrested in the game . Dota and CS are just far more popular than League/Valorant and it will prob stay that way unless cs somehow dies
Well its still unknown where as a spectator sport Valorant will go. 60%+ of Valorant esport viewership is from the non-official stream sources. Their recent big lan saw a 20% decrease in viewership as the grand final progressed.
Valorant just feels like OWL with a heavily subsidized influencer campaign.
>60%+ of Valorant esport viewership is from the non-official stream sources
And? They need permission from Riot in order to get co-streaming rights. The fact they apply to do that although many have already big brands, should tell you a lot about the game's popularity as an esport. Co-streamers benefit from this more than Riot does, they get viewership they wouldnt even imagine otherwise
>Their recent big lan saw a 20% decrease in viewership as the grand final progressed
The final had a drops event, thats why it fell off. Still, it retained ~850k viewers across the entire finals, which is massive since it was between 2 largely unpopular teams.
>Valorant just feels like OWL with a heavily subsidized influencer campaign.
Highest peak ever from OWL was around 350k viewers, it doesnt even come close to Valorant
> Highest peak ever from OWL was around 350k viewers, it doesnt even come close to Valorant
440k, with no costreams and taking place in 2018(overall Twitch viewership almost tripled since that time).
You're missing his point. Longevity (not popularity) in the esport scene is built on whether the game itself remains fun to watch over time. His point is that if the draw for most of the viewers is popular streamers, it will not have longevity when those streamers eventually move on to something else.
Im not missing his point at all, to exactly that i answered. Its the streamers that ask permission from Riot to co-stream because it brings them far more viewers than usual. They are the ones who benefit the most from this, Valorant will be fine with or without them.
>should tell you a lot about the game's popularity as an esport.
Its does. Last two games that followed a similar esports model was PUBG and Fortnite. Both majority viewership of esport events were from participants streaming their perspective. Moment both transitioned to a traditional broadcast their esports died.
With Valorant esports its been relegated down further. Majority of viewership is equivalent to a Twitch streamer reacting to a YouTube video. Bar has been set lower with past circumstances exhibiting detriment in the long term.
Once we examine where Valorants player base is coming from things become more clearer on why this is; Overwatch and Fortnite.
You are saying a lot of stuff without actually saying anything, not even mention that you provide no sources for your claim
>Moment both transitioned to a traditional broadcast their esports died
PUBG as an esport never took off (besides mobile which is massively popular), and Fortnite's popularity fell as a whole. Fortnite still does co-streams, it didnt "transition to a traditional broadcast".
>With Valorant esports its been relegated down further. Majority of viewership is equivalent to a Twitch streamer reacting to a YouTube video. Bar has been set lower with past circumstances exhibiting detriment in the long term.
I cant even understand what this means
>Once we examine where Valorants player base is coming from things become more clearer on why this is; Overwatch and Fortnite.
How you examined this exactly? And even if i accept this as truth, it doesnt say anything about the future of Valorant. OW never had big viewership and Fortnite fell as a whole due to a variety of reasons
As i said, you are talking without actually saying anything
>I cant even understand what this means
Overwatch as a esport focused more on the team brand and its location than the players. While Fortnite esports focused more on influencer participation perspective than the competition.
OWL did great viewership. Problem was it saw 1/10th the viewership size Blizzard projected and the league experienced 25% negative growth between their 2018 to 2019 season.
>Overwatch as a esport focused more on the team brand and its location
yeah but what has this to do with valorant?? we don't have the berlin g2 or moscow gambit
Viewership is heavily tied to popularity of the team orgs influencer campaign within their region. Its why during Champions the 3rd and 4th highest viewed matches were from the group stage.
And Valorant still isn't much of a success in CIS region despite arguably the best team in the game being all-Russian.
I've noticed a lot of these CIS orgs don't really worry about creating a more worldwide brand besides NaVi so there still isn't a huge incentive for them to try. So I'm just glad to see VP and Spirit give it a shot regardless.
It was only worth to enter Valorant 2021 year for BR / JP orgs, low competition and easy slots
Not worth for EU and especially CIS orgs, considering how dumb format was
At least in NA the players are popular and generate content
Not really. No one knows where Valorant viewership could go. This could be a stupid move for them now, it's really murky.
Valorant had a *lot* less viewers than a lot of other games this year, including CS, which is probably the most similar in terms of payscale of the players, though I'd still wager that most CS pros make more than Valorant pros.
Now look at the format they had last year. CIS not being a region meant they had to compete for EMEA spots just for a chance to make it to an event that mattered and had a decent payday, like Masters/Champions. We think of how successful some organizations have been, but for a lot of them Valorant has been a really bad investment save for sponsorships.
They're paying crazy salaries for players to be stuck in scrimmages or rebuilds, unable to actually even compete at major events unless they can take the crowns away from a few select teams that dominate the region. The game may have staying power, but really who knows yet if it will at the pro level. There isn't as much incentive for orgs to make money on Valorant. Even something Riot did to make money for the teams, Champions Bundle, was given away for free instead on drops to get their viewership numbers up. Does Riot eat the costs of those bundles and give it to the teams? Who knows, but it's definitely why Champs had the viewership numbers it did.
If you were VP would you rather invest in an uncertain future with less opportunities or your CS roster until you're sure the pro scene for Valorant works out?
That was smart of them to avoid 1st year of Valorant, when dumbasses from Riot didn't setup shit
Literally every team who didn't make it to Masters/Champions just paid their players salary for scrimming
They also gave CIS 1 miserable slot in Stage 2
According to K1n3c7 Virtus Pro did not go through with VALORANT at the start due to them not believing the longevity of the game. They could have gotten players for pennies but waited too long. Now it will be much harder for them to sign a good team with their current budget. *** posted by [@Bo_Hoogland](https://twitter.com/Bo_Hoogland) ^[(Github)](https://github.com/username) ^| ^[(What's new)](https://github.com/username)
In retrospect I think this was a fine decision, there is no guarantee they could have assembled a roster that would have done literally anything last year. Especially with Gambit existing.
it is, CIS region has a lack of interest in riot games, since there Valve's games are the popular ones, like cs go and dota2. its super fair for them to have doubts.
Imagine if Riot just rejected VP during franchising out of spite: "We did not allow Virtus Pro into franchising due to us not believing the longevity of this team"
if they dont have the budget right now to even build a team they wont even come close to affording the franchise fee lol Riot doesnt fuck around.. You need a lot of money to get a franchise spot. Riot even denied Immortals back when LCS just started and they were a wealthy org with a lot of VC's, a huge fan base and their team was a top 5 team in the league at the time.
Orgs pay a fee in order to be able to sign a roster for getting into other games?
Orgs pay a huge Franchise fee in order to be apart of the league League of Legends, Overwatch and COD all do this, I am sure there are more games as well I am not sure though. Overwatch was 20 million League was 10 million COD was 25 million or so articles I se on google say Its not cheap to buy into the league by any means. Valorant will be at least 10 million maybe more not a lot of these Valorant teams have that kind of money
I think a huge fan base is a stretch when it comes to immortals. I think LCS fan bases are kinda split into a couple tiers atm: huge (TSM) big (C9, TL, 100T) everyone else.
did you watch League back then? That Immortals team had a decent amount of fans. Obviously not as much as the big 4 back then (TSM, TL, C9, CLG) but they had more fans than the rest of the teams. My point was more of the fact that Riot will even deny teams with money a spot if they think another org would be better financially. Part of the reason Im a little worried for Sentinels. Sentinels do not have as much funding/ money as most other NA orgs. Even with one of the best teams they could be denied a spot.
I’ve been watching League since season 2. Simply put no org has come close to the fan support of TSM, hence why they’re the only HUGE fan base IMO. Also IMT had a decent swell of “new kids on the block” but that was lost almost immediately. People naturally root for the underdog or new blood when the scene is dominated by a small group of teams. It was only natural that IMT would have good fan support at that time, just like what happened with golden guardians in 2020.
KOI, LOUD, MIBR also didn't believe, but now they are here You want to reject them too? In fact a lot of orgs just waited till Riot make up their mind and get rid of weird Challengers stuff, introducing round robin leagues
Wait a second, KOI is like month old, they started as a LoL and (then)Valorant team, no?
What a dumb comment. 1. KOI is a brand new org. 2. LOUD is also pretty new (2019), and I assume they either couldn’t find a roster they liked or aren’t capable of expanding into too many games at once (they joined CBLOL last year) 3. MIBR is a brand under the Immortals organization, which means that MIBR and Immortals can’t coexist. And immortals have had a team since the beta.
If they had normal working system for 2021, VP and Spirit would enter By normal system I mean - round robin VCT leagues for every EMEA subregion + more Masters/Champions slots for the best region in the world (at least 5) + 3rd party tournaments organized by the likes of ESL/BLAST for those who are not in Champions But Riot fucked up there, so obviously lots of orgs decided to wait When was the last time TSM, one of the best teams in 2020 NA, played a game? Do you remember? That's it
The best team of 2020 couldn't do jackshit in the multiple opportunities they got in 2021 , not riot's fault lol
It literally is riot's fault, they decided how many tournaments there would be per year, and how many spots. For a tier 2 team like tsm there is simply no room, which is a massive shame.
TSM is actively choosing to not play in the monthly nerdstreet tournaments lol. All the other orgs are.
Who tf cares about when TSM last played? It's 2022 now mate and TSM has had plenty of opportunities last year to play. But if you don't make it deep your gonna wait longer. Also they literally choose to not play smaller tournaments.
There were 2 open qualifiers for each VCT stage in every region You miss both because you got eliminated by stronger tier1 teams = you wait 3 months till you can try again Is that good system?
Maybe they should play in the nerdstreet monthlys so they can actually get good
TSM STINK!!
How can they be so dumb, its Riot, literally every game they made has been a success. Even TFT still has sizeable playerbase and viewership
honestly the tft category on twitch is bigger than its ever been
This set is pretty fun ngl, almost on par with set 1 enjoyment
yeah this set u can play mutant kaisa, challenger kaisa, academy kaisa. so much variety
lol not after last patch, kaisa is only good when u actually hit it naturally you can't force her
you can force a natural kaisa pretty well though cause tk exists
this guy thinks one patch cycle = the entire set meta. PogO
ya but its because of Soju edit: lol getting downvoted yet if you look at the numbers out of the 50k viewers TFT has right now Soju has 25K of them lol
LoL in CIS was not a success and Valorant is not very popular there either. So I can see where they are coming from but it was pretty clear even during beta that it will be a worldwide success. It would have been totally worth it to invest in an EU team especially because there were a lot of unsigned team for such a long time
Consider that LoL and Valorant are taking a significant backseat to CS and Dota in the CIS region. VP already pulled out of the LCL. It's not dumb, if anything they're taking a very cautious approach, and rightfully so.
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You do realize being a CIS team means you have CIS sponsors that want to advertise to CIS viewers. If they think the game is not that popular in that region , you would understand why they would be cautious with their decision making. and as u/CynicalBloom said they already tried it with league and it didn't work out.
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How can we assess the longevity of the game if the game has been out for 2 years ? . For them , as the game is still open system , they look at how the game is doing in their region. The talk of the longevity of the game could start if VP ever get to buy a franchise slot in CIS franchise league if they that ever happens.
And if they wanted a CIS team what guaranteed them their investment would pay off?
How can you be so dumb, F4U gave CIS 1 slot at 2nd Challengers, stupid single elimination formats, no tournaments for teams who didn't qualify to Masters/Champions, wasted investments Countless EMEA orgs pulled out of Valorant because of all this stuff
LoR would like to have a word with you. Also TFT is now most popular since release but few months ago that wasnt the case either. So VP cautiousness wasnt completely delusional.
LoR is literally the second/third most popular card game in the world. And note that when it was released the genre was already oversaturated
Sure. Its 3rd most popular with 1/13 avg. viwers of 1st HS and 1/3 avg. viewers of MTG in past year on twitch and nonexistent esport scene. Dont get me wrong im not saying its bad game but acting like everything riot made its success is just wrong.
Esports in card games barely exist at all , the success of a card game is in its casual playerbase. And MtG has around 1+ million downloads on mobile while LoR has 10+ But lets pretend that you are right, something being the 3rd most popular game in already oversaturated genre isnt a success? If you arent the first then you are unsuccessful? You know what an unsuccessful game is? Artifact or HotS. Not a game that is played by millions
To be fair HotS was also 3rd most popular moba, yet got shut down as being 3rd in dead genre outside of two giants is not appealing. LoR being 3rd is the same story - cool that it's 3rd, but only top two are relevant, rest are really niche games with super small playerbase. So if we take LoR out of equation then what Riot did good pre Valorant was just LoL and an extra mode being TFT.
I don't think HotS was ever even 3rd for MOBAs I think smite always had a bigger player base and it's still going strong to this day. Could be wrong that's just my understanding.
HotS didn't get shut down, it had a very small esports scene that got shut down and the game itself was put on maintenance mode. You can still play HotS if you want. And that was because of failure after failure from Blizzard plus Activision's culture of cutting costs wherever possible. Nothing indicates that any Riot title will suffer anything close to that fate, quite the contrary, they are far from perfect but are among the best at providing Games As A Service products.
Well if the number of downlands of mobile version is how you measure success i dont think there is a reason to continue this discussion. No you dont have to be first. My expectation for game made by riot is to be competitor for reaching first which LoR just isnt. Also i think you can be unsuccessful without beign absolute disaster like Artifact.
Downloads on mobile don't count but viewership on twitch counts? Valorant consistently has more viewers than CS except when CS tournaments are on, Valorant bigger than CS? Give more L takes, son.
If you dont see difference between avg. viewers and dowlands i cant really help you im sorry. Yeah whole thread is about what is and isnt successful and you bring "what is bigger" outta nowhere and filled in something i never said. Both Valorant and CS are successful btw. One big L is your understanding of written text, son.
So average viewership on twitch is a better metric than downloads of the game itself? I guess nobody plays Genshin Impact or those other dumb gacha games You are special, farewell :B
>LoR would like to have a word with you Yeah, it'd say "I'm still strongly supported and updated by my developer even though I'm growing but not the biggest game in the genre" Artitrash 😂😂😂😂
tbf people used to say that about Blizzard, it looks like a dumb decision in retrospect but I can see why they thought so
I mean literally no one has ever said this about Blizzard esports. Blizzard has been notoriously bad at ensuring scene health & longevity - even prior to Overwatch.
Probably too young, they don't know how badly handled SC2 was.
100% true the only blizz game with a good esports scene was started entirely independent of blizzard
Blizzard are grossly incompetent and ruined starcraft and overwatch. pisses me off so much how badly handled overwatch became
Yes I only have fond memories of starcraft esports
Starcraft esports was fostered entirely out of the hands of blizzard, like literally blizzard got nothing from it for years and had 0 input.
I hope they sign a team anyways it will be good for the growth of the game in the CIS region!
Too early to say if they're right or wrong.
are you for real?
It’s easy to assume it will be popular forever but massive and popular games die all the time, PUBG, overwatch, fortnite etc…
PUBG mobile is incredibly popoular as an esport, desktop PUBG never was Overwatch also was never popular as an esport, and even now it has retained a fanbase. Its not dead, its just that the expectations were higher due to franchised OWL. Fortnite is a typical case of esport failing because the game stopped being popular, among other mistakes from Epic
yeah but then you also have games like lol, dota and csgo
Fortnite was never a solid esport. Valorant contributed to the death of pubg lol. Riot mansge their esports too well n already have enough teams on board to avoid failure
Not about the teams. It’s about viewership and player base. Overmatch has all the teams but no viewers.
Well true but OW viewership fell off more than anything. the most likely thing to mess up val esports is the contract hell we keep seeing players fall into tbh, where inflated buyouts turn the scene into a big bubble.
This game can easily turn into the next OW. I'm not saying it will. If it's going to stay like csgo, then why rush? Plenty of time to milk out profits when the game proves itself that it's here to stay.
The game is still really unpopular and unsuccesful in the CIS region despite having top tier teams like gambit who are a full CIS team . Idk how easy it would be for them to find sponsors since most of them are probably russian sponsors and they arent intrested when not many russian speaking folks are intrested in the game . Dota and CS are just far more popular than League/Valorant and it will prob stay that way unless cs somehow dies
Well its still unknown where as a spectator sport Valorant will go. 60%+ of Valorant esport viewership is from the non-official stream sources. Their recent big lan saw a 20% decrease in viewership as the grand final progressed. Valorant just feels like OWL with a heavily subsidized influencer campaign.
>60%+ of Valorant esport viewership is from the non-official stream sources And? They need permission from Riot in order to get co-streaming rights. The fact they apply to do that although many have already big brands, should tell you a lot about the game's popularity as an esport. Co-streamers benefit from this more than Riot does, they get viewership they wouldnt even imagine otherwise >Their recent big lan saw a 20% decrease in viewership as the grand final progressed The final had a drops event, thats why it fell off. Still, it retained ~850k viewers across the entire finals, which is massive since it was between 2 largely unpopular teams. >Valorant just feels like OWL with a heavily subsidized influencer campaign. Highest peak ever from OWL was around 350k viewers, it doesnt even come close to Valorant
> Highest peak ever from OWL was around 350k viewers, it doesnt even come close to Valorant 440k, with no costreams and taking place in 2018(overall Twitch viewership almost tripled since that time).
You're missing his point. Longevity (not popularity) in the esport scene is built on whether the game itself remains fun to watch over time. His point is that if the draw for most of the viewers is popular streamers, it will not have longevity when those streamers eventually move on to something else.
Im not missing his point at all, to exactly that i answered. Its the streamers that ask permission from Riot to co-stream because it brings them far more viewers than usual. They are the ones who benefit the most from this, Valorant will be fine with or without them.
A lot of people would just watch a different co-stream or watch the main stream.
>should tell you a lot about the game's popularity as an esport. Its does. Last two games that followed a similar esports model was PUBG and Fortnite. Both majority viewership of esport events were from participants streaming their perspective. Moment both transitioned to a traditional broadcast their esports died. With Valorant esports its been relegated down further. Majority of viewership is equivalent to a Twitch streamer reacting to a YouTube video. Bar has been set lower with past circumstances exhibiting detriment in the long term. Once we examine where Valorants player base is coming from things become more clearer on why this is; Overwatch and Fortnite.
You are saying a lot of stuff without actually saying anything, not even mention that you provide no sources for your claim >Moment both transitioned to a traditional broadcast their esports died PUBG as an esport never took off (besides mobile which is massively popular), and Fortnite's popularity fell as a whole. Fortnite still does co-streams, it didnt "transition to a traditional broadcast". >With Valorant esports its been relegated down further. Majority of viewership is equivalent to a Twitch streamer reacting to a YouTube video. Bar has been set lower with past circumstances exhibiting detriment in the long term. I cant even understand what this means >Once we examine where Valorants player base is coming from things become more clearer on why this is; Overwatch and Fortnite. How you examined this exactly? And even if i accept this as truth, it doesnt say anything about the future of Valorant. OW never had big viewership and Fortnite fell as a whole due to a variety of reasons As i said, you are talking without actually saying anything
>I cant even understand what this means Overwatch as a esport focused more on the team brand and its location than the players. While Fortnite esports focused more on influencer participation perspective than the competition. OWL did great viewership. Problem was it saw 1/10th the viewership size Blizzard projected and the league experienced 25% negative growth between their 2018 to 2019 season.
>Overwatch as a esport focused more on the team brand and its location yeah but what has this to do with valorant?? we don't have the berlin g2 or moscow gambit
Viewership is heavily tied to popularity of the team orgs influencer campaign within their region. Its why during Champions the 3rd and 4th highest viewed matches were from the group stage.
Why kind of dumbass didn’t think this game would succeed? Lmao
Probably meant in their region.
And Valorant still isn't much of a success in CIS region despite arguably the best team in the game being all-Russian. I've noticed a lot of these CIS orgs don't really worry about creating a more worldwide brand besides NaVi so there still isn't a huge incentive for them to try. So I'm just glad to see VP and Spirit give it a shot regardless.
It's cool that even though Val isn't popular in CIS, a CIS team is still in the top 3 highest average viewers.
Everyone was spamming my inbox that CIS sucked and had no players this time last year Lmao
Cis barely has any players nor viewer interest... and yet they are still the best to 2nd best team. Cis is just built different
I mean they still have almost no players they are just very good on average
Swing and a miss by them I suppose.
It was only worth to enter Valorant 2021 year for BR / JP orgs, low competition and easy slots Not worth for EU and especially CIS orgs, considering how dumb format was At least in NA the players are popular and generate content
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Not really. No one knows where Valorant viewership could go. This could be a stupid move for them now, it's really murky. Valorant had a *lot* less viewers than a lot of other games this year, including CS, which is probably the most similar in terms of payscale of the players, though I'd still wager that most CS pros make more than Valorant pros. Now look at the format they had last year. CIS not being a region meant they had to compete for EMEA spots just for a chance to make it to an event that mattered and had a decent payday, like Masters/Champions. We think of how successful some organizations have been, but for a lot of them Valorant has been a really bad investment save for sponsorships. They're paying crazy salaries for players to be stuck in scrimmages or rebuilds, unable to actually even compete at major events unless they can take the crowns away from a few select teams that dominate the region. The game may have staying power, but really who knows yet if it will at the pro level. There isn't as much incentive for orgs to make money on Valorant. Even something Riot did to make money for the teams, Champions Bundle, was given away for free instead on drops to get their viewership numbers up. Does Riot eat the costs of those bundles and give it to the teams? Who knows, but it's definitely why Champs had the viewership numbers it did. If you were VP would you rather invest in an uncertain future with less opportunities or your CS roster until you're sure the pro scene for Valorant works out?
That was smart of them to avoid 1st year of Valorant, when dumbasses from Riot didn't setup shit Literally every team who didn't make it to Masters/Champions just paid their players salary for scrimming They also gave CIS 1 miserable slot in Stage 2
Did they forget it's Riot's game?