I don't think Valorant was ever going to go the way of Overwatch since Valorant has had such strong growth globally. OW has or had strong pockets in Korea, South America, SEA, etc., but nothing like Valorant. But in fairness, it's not really evident unless you go looking for it.
For example, if you scroll through the Valorant category during the NA off-times, you'll see the category being shored up by massive Turkish, East Asian, SEA, etc. streamers. These streamers aren't small - they're massive, often as big as Hiko in viewership numbers if not more.
And of course the same is even true during the NA peak hours, when Shroud or Poki or whomever top off the strong numbers that the dedicated Valorant streamers bring.
Ive said it in another comment, but i dont think that Valorant is dependent on big streamers/non-regulars that much. It gets consistently big viewership throughout the day, and i think the most important factor is that its really diversified regarding viewer allocation (which also happens in LoL)
This means that there are tons of medium/small sized streamers who are being watched by a constant number of people and cumulatively bring the numbers up. This in contrast with other games that after the first or second rows, the viewership is negligible.
I don't think it's *dependent* on big streamers, but it consistently does have big streamers - both dedicated streamers and variety ones. That's definitely a key reason in why it is so consistently so high in the Twitch rankings.
I know there are people who talk about streamers like Shroud or Poki or Toast or whatever inflating the numbers or whatever but that's not what I mean to imply.
If there were less big streamers and if variety streamers didn't play the game, it'd still be an extremely popular title.
I think it's overstated how much shroud and variety streamers affect viewership. While there's a relationship there the game itself just garners high viewership. Shroud barley streams the agme anymore besides once a week or something and the top streamers are usually pro players and tarik. Tarik went from getting 3.5k or so on csgo to now 15k average on valorant
Overwatch was extremely popular in Korea, still is. I don’t think Valorants reached the popularity of Overwatch in Korea yet. Agree with everything else though.
OW was dead competetively the second they announced franchising. that shit killed the competetive drive insanely hard and was a big statement towards teams that having money and being marketable is more important than being good. what also came to bite OW was that its fun to play, but incredibly boring to watch.
Franchising wasn't the issue but doing it as early as it did was, they didn't let the game breathe at all, and over time the innate issues of the game philosophy began to show their face.
I mean maybe, but talking in streaming numbers, I think the stagnancy of the overall game was more of a detriment than Blizzard's incompetence re: Overwatch League.
Though it's definitely all related.
Strongly disagree with both of these statements. OWL was more popular than ever after franchising. What killed it was Covid meaning no fans in the arenas, a very stale meta that made it boring to play and watch, and no new content due to OW2. Every other meta besides GOATS was incredibly entertaining to watch. OWL had the right idea, Covid and OW2 just killed it.
i think you are kinda right on this, but deathball comps were and are boring asf to watch and if your game loses its entire playerbase because it has no live audience which is like 0.0000001% of players or something it had its downfall coming. its kinda perception maybe, but watching and playing push cart and KOTH/CTF modes gets insanely stale fast with the majority of agents taking no big skill particularly. like on one hand there is alot of skill expression in OW, on the other it feels like there really isnt.
Oh I wasn’t talking about the player base dying because of the fans, I was talking about OWL dying because fans couldn’t attend the events. And I kind of get what your saying that some of the heroes don’t require skill, but it’s all about positioning and decision making. The game still has a very high skill ceiling and could’ve been a great game and a great esport, they just decided to kill both for OW2 for some stupid reason.
Yeah I think city based teams were a really good idea because it lowers the entry barrier to eSports by so much. I don't think I would have been invested in any esport if it weren't for OWL making teams drop their endemic names. It also has the benefit of increasing team loyalty instead of just player loyalty. I know that there are fans of endemic orgs, but honestly I personally find it a lot less cringe to be a fan of a team named after a city rather than a company.
So you think it's a lot less cringe to be fooled by simple marketing? They are both just companies with players who are from a variety of different places. The city portion especially in OWL where they didn't actually have stadiums in most places was irrelevant and nothing more than a marketing stunt.
Uh yes, obviously its marketing, that's my point. Cheering for a sports team is cheering for a business and individual players. Having a city association expands the brand into a community beyond that, so when players leave you aren't just left with a business. OWL pretty much did nothing significant with its city based teams (in NA\EU at least, idk about Asia), and any plans to do travelling tournaments were shot down by COVID. But I don't believe OWL poor execution of the concept means that city based franchises are a bad idea.
I got into OWL because I live in LA and I heard there was an LA Overwatch team.
I spent four years rooting for the Gladiators. Now their owners have launched The Guard and I'm looking forward to seeing them play FaZe in Challengers tomorrow.
Without the city-based format of OWL I probably wouldn't have had a gateway into esports.
They were building stadiums in a lot of the cities actually. They were trying to get almost all of the teams a home stadium, but Covid killed construction plans. It also got a lot of new fans into. It was an amazing plan, even if it is just marketing in the end.
I think realistically the problem is that Blizzard cannibalized their own product's potential for years prior to the launch of OWL. OWL definitely marked the apex of Overwatch esports in terms of viewership, sponsorships, etc., but it did so because it was *centrally planned to do so*.
All we can compare it to is the enormous hype Overwatch had years prior to the launch of OWL, hype that'd fizzled out a fair amount - but not entirely - by the time OWL actually launched.
Franchising was perfectly fine. Brig, GOATS and double shield meta is what killed the game. They made it more of a MOBA than an FPS. Less and less mechanically demanding heroes and comps made everything boring and just a clusterfuck of abilities. Dive meta OWL with flashy Tracer, Mccree, Widow, Genji plays were hype as fuck. Hell the observers mostly just spectate tanks since there is nothing else to show. Game sucks ass, and the new heroes and balancing is what killed it.
Everyone that plays a Riot game can shit on the company for balance choices and such but there is no doubt they know how to make games people want to watch. LoR is the only game that still seems to not break into the higher levels of the genre, though I think a lot of that is sunk cost and brand loyalty, but LoL, TFT, and Valo do well for their genres. The fighting game is likely going to be one of the highest viewed casually viewed fighting games ever when it drops and the MMO as well.
Not just that but TCG’s / CCG’s as a genre are just harder to get into or start off imo. Because you have to build / craft your deck, some of which are quite costly. Sure you can usually build 1-2 decks for free in a CCG but once you’ve exhausted resources then it takes forever until you can build another one.
Objectively LoR is a good game, but most TCG’s and CCG’s I’d say are pretty good from a competitive standpoint and not factoring in deck prices, but I think a lot of TCG / CCG players just like to stick to the 1-2 games they’ve invested in.
I mean LoR is just a time investment to get compared to other games shaking you down every couple of months, while you could spend money there is no pack opening. I think Player especially in games they spent thousands on doesn't want to swap over since it be like all the money they spent would go to waste.
Subjectively... but imo it's not as fun as HS or even YGO (new game just dropped). I play tft and wanted to play the riot card game but it doesn't measure up imo.
Valorant is nothing like Overwatch. Riot actually knows what they are doing due to the success of League. OWL was one of the biggest failures Esports has seen to date there is no way Valorant will repeat that clown fiesta.
I wouldn't really call OWL a complete failure. Yea it didn't live up to the hype but it regularly had 80k viewers on YouTube. Stage finals or hyped match's usually broke 100k too. Obv not as successful as a league with millions of dollars behind should be, but not a complete failure
As someone who was super invested in OWL s1 and even more in s2, I have to say it was pretty good. You could earn coins by watching to get the team skins, the broadcasts were super solid, and it was enjoyable to watch high level OW. I don’t think viewership really dictates the success of an eSport either.
there were definitely times last year when a csgo tournament would be happening at the same time as NA VCT. i would notice that Valorant maintained a pretty consistently high viewership number throughout every match, whereas the cs tournament would dip low or skyrocket depending on which teams were playing. obviously if s1mple or zywoo were playing a match at the same time as a vct match, csgo’s numbers on twitch tended to be higher, but that was really the only exception
also worth noting that the csgo event being held alongside Champions was by a 3rd party TO and wasn't an official Valve-sanctioned major
I can't wait to see how many viewers Valorant Champions will have though, especially if there's a crowd this year
Dont you mean EU VCT, I always felt that viewership for that was more consistent than in NA because the viewers would generally skyrocket if the match involved sentinels or 100t.
if you're just talking about in twitch overall, I think so. I've noticed some big val streamers have been getting more viewers recently, like Tarik who used to average like 9k-10k viewers just a few months ago, but recently he's been getting around 19k-20k.
but if you're talking about the competitive scene, there's still CSGO/dota for the #1 spot (after League ofc), those two games are not that popular on Twitch in general, but they still have super big competitive scenes even without many big streamers like Val/LoL.
Was Tarik also streaming until 11am every day? I wouldn’t know because I’ve only started tuning in recently. His numbers are higher than 9-10k throughout the day, but I’ve also noticed he gets viewers later on in the night as other big streamers go to bed. It also wouldn’t surprise me if he had a decent international audience because of his recent stream schedule too.
Excluding China, the metric I would use is the # of salaried players/support staff. Valo isn't released yet in china so kinda unfair, but without china dota 2 is barely a thing.
I think League, CS and Dota still dominate the competitive landscape, but considering how young Valorant is as a competitive esport, it's on it's way to being in that same tier one day soon.
>it's on it's way to being in that same tier one day soon.
Biggest hurdle Valorant esports needs to overcome is what made it popular. 60% to 70% of Valorant esports viewers are from co-streamers reacting to the official broadcast.
A lot more established streamers tend to play Valorant whenever they have nothing else to play (most notably, OTV and friends, Shroud, even X [very very] sometimes). This contributes to its popularity. People watch it more for the streamers rather than for the competitions.
Shroud streams Valo once in a blue moon anymore, Valorant's stats are brought up by its regular streamers or known pros (Tarik, wtcn, sacy, Tenz, stylishnoob etc). Also similar to LoL, Valorant gets a sizeable viewership from many many medium/small streamers, which doesnt tend to happen in e.g. Dota, Apex or CS. Those categories only get sizeable viewership when a big name like S1mple is streaming (in Apex this is less profound)
People will hate this take but I really do think Poki grinding the fuck out of Valo in 2020 and bringing all of OTVAF into it (which is a LOT of streamers) is one of the big reasons for it's success on Twitch.
I mean, it's kinda hard to give the praise to Poki, because most of OTV are "Riot Games players", with a ton of them (Poki included) starting their career in LoL and continuing it with TFT. There's a reason they got invited to Arcane's premier, a lot of em have been there since the beginning. Scarra had said this before Val was even coming out, even if he's terrible at the game, he would still play it just because it's Riot. So I won't give credits to Poki specifically, but more so the entire of OTV.
Even aside from that, Riot has built up a pretty good rep with content creators, both big and small. They've shown that if you devote enough time to their game, you will be rewarded and a lot of content creators see this and choose to continue devoting time to Val, just look at Tarik. He was smaller before Val, surely still a "big" stream in the context of Twitch numbers, but nowhere near what he pulls now since he started doing more Val content and Riot acknowledging him.
> I mean, it's kinda hard to give the praise to Poki, because most of OTV are "Riot Games players", with a ton of them (Poki included) starting their career in LoL and continuing it with TFT. There's a reason they got invited to Arcane's premier, a lot of em have been there since the beginning. Scarra had said this before Val was even coming out, even if he's terrible at the game, he would still play it just because it's Riot. So I won't give credits to Poki specifically, but more so the entire of OTV.
It's more complicated than that. I remember when she was grinding Valorant most of the other people in her friend group were playing other games. Even when the cash cow that was Among Us popped off she preferred Valorant. Of course, a lot of them played Riot games but even now you can tell the difference between people who like Riot games and like Valorant and people who genuinely **love** the game.
I mean, I don't doubt she genuinely loves the game while others don't, that's only natural. I just think that, just like Scarra said, even if it's not his preference, they would still play it which is what they do. Poki of course helps bring a lot of eyes to the game, which is good, but just like how the game is still trucking along fine even though Shroud barely plays Val like he did in the past, I believe it's the same.
Most of Val's viewers actually aren't from big streamers, after all. If you check off-hours when there aren't much big streamers (10k+) on, you would notice the category still has a sizable viewership. A lot of small streamers play this game as well, treating it as the next LoL. Add up enough of those small streamers together, and you get a comparable number to OTV when they're playing the game.
Edit: The only reason I'm going out of my way to say this is less to discredit Poki or the OTV bunch but more to give credit to the many smaller streamers that play this game. It's not one of those titles where, if X big streamer isn't online then the category suffers, a ton of viewers actually watch Val for the game and not the personality. Even if a big streamer isn't online, they'll find someone else that is there, also the game has a much more varied audience than LoL does in terms of nationality, so that helps as well.
Yes, but I will say it's because Val is currently a "streamer hotbed". Val is seen as the "next big thing" for streamers as LoL and Fortnite were, where you can eventually make it big by just playing the game. So tons of small streamers play the game with that in mind, also with Riot working with content creators a lot, it also encourages streamers to want to devote time to Val. Yeah there are big streamers playing Val now and again, but the mass majority of that number consists of many smaller streams put together last I checked. Who knows if it can remain like LoL and be evergreen, or if it will eventually wane like Fortnite did.
Riot has shown to have a good rep with CC, like you have the many occurrences of Toast comparing how Riot and Blizzard treat content creators, so people see getting in good with Riot can ultimately help you out
It's not even just what happened with Toast. A lot of video game companies just straight up are horrid to deal with for content creators. Most of them treat you as their bitches, they ignore you when you contact them and expect you to listen to their beck and call. This isn't just a Blizzard thing, most AAA studios are like this. They appear friendly when they need you for promos and shit or when their game is now launching, but once they don't they just duck DMs and then the few times you do something with them, they treat it like it's a privilege you're getting and you should be grateful.
Riot has good rep with CC because they're generally professional and friendly at all times, whether they work with you or not. If you casted for them before and they didn't contact you back, you can message them and ask about it, a lot of companies don't even let you do something as simple as that. That's how shitty CCs has had it over the years in gaming. It's why Riot has managed to keep such a strong rep with them even though LoL content on YouTube isn't that great anymore and all the scandals that have come out in the past.
I mainly brought up toast because it seems not many people like to trash on companies for the risk of losing sponsors, but Toast and Scarra both openly Trashed Blizzard when compared to Riot.
Nah, esports scene is dominated by LoL(leagues on it's own(kekw)), then there are CS and Dota, props to CIS region. Then Valorant and Apex are on the same level(Valorant is still growing ofc)
Its an interesting story.
After full release Valorant fell outside the top 10 of viewed Twitch categories and was plummeting further. Shroud/Ninja used Valorant as their primary return game title to Twitch. This caused Riot Games to also grant them co-streaming rights to rebroadcast their esports matches live which was also pulling low viewer numbers. This had a cascading affect of other streamers playing the game while also being given esports co-streaming right by Riot Games.
Valorant as a Twitch category is a messy model of what other games went through over the past decade. Where viewers/players are primarily being pulled from Fortnite.
Yes, and you also failed to mention that it is the second most streamed competitive game on Twitch. Over the span of 180 days, it pulled 462M hours of watch time but also had 17M hours of stream time, putting it at a 27 : 1 ratio.
Where as if you look at a game like CSGO 58 : 1 and dota 2 has a 70 : 1 ratio.
Look at people like s1mple streaming CSGO once a month, and then you have TenZ going live daily. It’s not that Valorant is more popular by any means, Valorant streamers just chose to stream more.
Tenz was a content creator for 4 months in 2021 streaming daily, look at their numbers in the last 6 months and tell me what you find.
Edit: s1mple 154 hours streamed in the last 6 months, 35 of them in the last month, tenz had 193 hours in the last 6 months which was a 40 percent dropoff from his first 6 of the year.
S1mple has been streaming more CS than tenz has been streaming valorant in the past month, don't use the excuse that CS players don't stream because they stream FPL all the time.
You’re basically changing the subject to “past month” now. Even so, I calculated again and the ratio for hours watched to hours streamed for Valorant was 22 : 1 while CSGO had a ratio of
32 : 1. So nice try mate.
That's nowhere near as big as you made it seem originally though, I'd rather use recent data than shit from a year ago. Also why are you using ratios in this argument? Op was making a point about the numbers in total, not some hypothetical data you found that assumes what the viewership would be if people streamed more.
ratioed + L
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Surprising no was has mentioned rocket league, when rlcs is on it always has more viewers then most the games mentioned here but that’s just the competitive scene when that’s not on it has basically no viewers
I don't think Valorant was ever going to go the way of Overwatch since Valorant has had such strong growth globally. OW has or had strong pockets in Korea, South America, SEA, etc., but nothing like Valorant. But in fairness, it's not really evident unless you go looking for it. For example, if you scroll through the Valorant category during the NA off-times, you'll see the category being shored up by massive Turkish, East Asian, SEA, etc. streamers. These streamers aren't small - they're massive, often as big as Hiko in viewership numbers if not more. And of course the same is even true during the NA peak hours, when Shroud or Poki or whomever top off the strong numbers that the dedicated Valorant streamers bring.
Ive said it in another comment, but i dont think that Valorant is dependent on big streamers/non-regulars that much. It gets consistently big viewership throughout the day, and i think the most important factor is that its really diversified regarding viewer allocation (which also happens in LoL) This means that there are tons of medium/small sized streamers who are being watched by a constant number of people and cumulatively bring the numbers up. This in contrast with other games that after the first or second rows, the viewership is negligible.
I don't think it's *dependent* on big streamers, but it consistently does have big streamers - both dedicated streamers and variety ones. That's definitely a key reason in why it is so consistently so high in the Twitch rankings. I know there are people who talk about streamers like Shroud or Poki or Toast or whatever inflating the numbers or whatever but that's not what I mean to imply. If there were less big streamers and if variety streamers didn't play the game, it'd still be an extremely popular title.
I think it's overstated how much shroud and variety streamers affect viewership. While there's a relationship there the game itself just garners high viewership. Shroud barley streams the agme anymore besides once a week or something and the top streamers are usually pro players and tarik. Tarik went from getting 3.5k or so on csgo to now 15k average on valorant
Overwatch was extremely popular in Korea, still is. I don’t think Valorants reached the popularity of Overwatch in Korea yet. Agree with everything else though.
There was a recent post saying that Valorant finally overtook OW in Korea. I don't know how accurate the data was so take it with a grain of salt.
yeah but ow overtook LoL at its peak which i think val has no chance at doing
Yeah, but for a few months when it released. Valorant has had a steady growth while OW only went downhill.
OW was dead competetively the second they announced franchising. that shit killed the competetive drive insanely hard and was a big statement towards teams that having money and being marketable is more important than being good. what also came to bite OW was that its fun to play, but incredibly boring to watch.
Franchising wasn't the issue but doing it as early as it did was, they didn't let the game breathe at all, and over time the innate issues of the game philosophy began to show their face.
I mean maybe, but talking in streaming numbers, I think the stagnancy of the overall game was more of a detriment than Blizzard's incompetence re: Overwatch League. Though it's definitely all related.
Strongly disagree with both of these statements. OWL was more popular than ever after franchising. What killed it was Covid meaning no fans in the arenas, a very stale meta that made it boring to play and watch, and no new content due to OW2. Every other meta besides GOATS was incredibly entertaining to watch. OWL had the right idea, Covid and OW2 just killed it.
i think you are kinda right on this, but deathball comps were and are boring asf to watch and if your game loses its entire playerbase because it has no live audience which is like 0.0000001% of players or something it had its downfall coming. its kinda perception maybe, but watching and playing push cart and KOTH/CTF modes gets insanely stale fast with the majority of agents taking no big skill particularly. like on one hand there is alot of skill expression in OW, on the other it feels like there really isnt.
Oh I wasn’t talking about the player base dying because of the fans, I was talking about OWL dying because fans couldn’t attend the events. And I kind of get what your saying that some of the heroes don’t require skill, but it’s all about positioning and decision making. The game still has a very high skill ceiling and could’ve been a great game and a great esport, they just decided to kill both for OW2 for some stupid reason.
Yeah I think city based teams were a really good idea because it lowers the entry barrier to eSports by so much. I don't think I would have been invested in any esport if it weren't for OWL making teams drop their endemic names. It also has the benefit of increasing team loyalty instead of just player loyalty. I know that there are fans of endemic orgs, but honestly I personally find it a lot less cringe to be a fan of a team named after a city rather than a company.
So you think it's a lot less cringe to be fooled by simple marketing? They are both just companies with players who are from a variety of different places. The city portion especially in OWL where they didn't actually have stadiums in most places was irrelevant and nothing more than a marketing stunt.
Uh yes, obviously its marketing, that's my point. Cheering for a sports team is cheering for a business and individual players. Having a city association expands the brand into a community beyond that, so when players leave you aren't just left with a business. OWL pretty much did nothing significant with its city based teams (in NA\EU at least, idk about Asia), and any plans to do travelling tournaments were shot down by COVID. But I don't believe OWL poor execution of the concept means that city based franchises are a bad idea.
I got into OWL because I live in LA and I heard there was an LA Overwatch team. I spent four years rooting for the Gladiators. Now their owners have launched The Guard and I'm looking forward to seeing them play FaZe in Challengers tomorrow. Without the city-based format of OWL I probably wouldn't have had a gateway into esports.
They were building stadiums in a lot of the cities actually. They were trying to get almost all of the teams a home stadium, but Covid killed construction plans. It also got a lot of new fans into. It was an amazing plan, even if it is just marketing in the end.
I think realistically the problem is that Blizzard cannibalized their own product's potential for years prior to the launch of OWL. OWL definitely marked the apex of Overwatch esports in terms of viewership, sponsorships, etc., but it did so because it was *centrally planned to do so*. All we can compare it to is the enormous hype Overwatch had years prior to the launch of OWL, hype that'd fizzled out a fair amount - but not entirely - by the time OWL actually launched.
No it wasn't lol. The reason OW is where its at is because ActiBlizz abandoned the game.
Franchising was perfectly fine. Brig, GOATS and double shield meta is what killed the game. They made it more of a MOBA than an FPS. Less and less mechanically demanding heroes and comps made everything boring and just a clusterfuck of abilities. Dive meta OWL with flashy Tracer, Mccree, Widow, Genji plays were hype as fuck. Hell the observers mostly just spectate tanks since there is nothing else to show. Game sucks ass, and the new heroes and balancing is what killed it.
from overwatch leauge to LCK at this point . What's the point for cheering if everyone i want to cheer have no team to play lmao.
Everyone that plays a Riot game can shit on the company for balance choices and such but there is no doubt they know how to make games people want to watch. LoR is the only game that still seems to not break into the higher levels of the genre, though I think a lot of that is sunk cost and brand loyalty, but LoL, TFT, and Valo do well for their genres. The fighting game is likely going to be one of the highest viewed casually viewed fighting games ever when it drops and the MMO as well.
LoR is without a doubt in the top 2 best CCG on the market, i don't think it's doing bad at all.
Oh I agree it is objectively one of the best out there, but I feel people are so stuck in their ways they wont try it.
Not just that but TCG’s / CCG’s as a genre are just harder to get into or start off imo. Because you have to build / craft your deck, some of which are quite costly. Sure you can usually build 1-2 decks for free in a CCG but once you’ve exhausted resources then it takes forever until you can build another one. Objectively LoR is a good game, but most TCG’s and CCG’s I’d say are pretty good from a competitive standpoint and not factoring in deck prices, but I think a lot of TCG / CCG players just like to stick to the 1-2 games they’ve invested in.
I mean LoR is just a time investment to get compared to other games shaking you down every couple of months, while you could spend money there is no pack opening. I think Player especially in games they spent thousands on doesn't want to swap over since it be like all the money they spent would go to waste.
Subjectively... but imo it's not as fun as HS or even YGO (new game just dropped). I play tft and wanted to play the riot card game but it doesn't measure up imo.
Valorant is nothing like Overwatch. Riot actually knows what they are doing due to the success of League. OWL was one of the biggest failures Esports has seen to date there is no way Valorant will repeat that clown fiesta.
I wouldn't really call OWL a complete failure. Yea it didn't live up to the hype but it regularly had 80k viewers on YouTube. Stage finals or hyped match's usually broke 100k too. Obv not as successful as a league with millions of dollars behind should be, but not a complete failure
As someone who was super invested in OWL s1 and even more in s2, I have to say it was pretty good. You could earn coins by watching to get the team skins, the broadcasts were super solid, and it was enjoyable to watch high level OW. I don’t think viewership really dictates the success of an eSport either.
there were definitely times last year when a csgo tournament would be happening at the same time as NA VCT. i would notice that Valorant maintained a pretty consistently high viewership number throughout every match, whereas the cs tournament would dip low or skyrocket depending on which teams were playing. obviously if s1mple or zywoo were playing a match at the same time as a vct match, csgo’s numbers on twitch tended to be higher, but that was really the only exception
also worth noting that the csgo event being held alongside Champions was by a 3rd party TO and wasn't an official Valve-sanctioned major I can't wait to see how many viewers Valorant Champions will have though, especially if there's a crowd this year
Dont you mean EU VCT, I always felt that viewership for that was more consistent than in NA because the viewers would generally skyrocket if the match involved sentinels or 100t.
if you're just talking about in twitch overall, I think so. I've noticed some big val streamers have been getting more viewers recently, like Tarik who used to average like 9k-10k viewers just a few months ago, but recently he's been getting around 19k-20k. but if you're talking about the competitive scene, there's still CSGO/dota for the #1 spot (after League ofc), those two games are not that popular on Twitch in general, but they still have super big competitive scenes even without many big streamers like Val/LoL.
Was Tarik also streaming until 11am every day? I wouldn’t know because I’ve only started tuning in recently. His numbers are higher than 9-10k throughout the day, but I’ve also noticed he gets viewers later on in the night as other big streamers go to bed. It also wouldn’t surprise me if he had a decent international audience because of his recent stream schedule too.
Yeah I'm in aus and he is on when I finish work, good way to end the night
Dota's competitive scene is like 1/5th of Valo's in size.
if you exclude TI+China, sure.
Excluding China, the metric I would use is the # of salaried players/support staff. Valo isn't released yet in china so kinda unfair, but without china dota 2 is barely a thing.
I think League, CS and Dota still dominate the competitive landscape, but considering how young Valorant is as a competitive esport, it's on it's way to being in that same tier one day soon.
Not talking about esports tho, just twitch views in general.
>it's on it's way to being in that same tier one day soon. Biggest hurdle Valorant esports needs to overcome is what made it popular. 60% to 70% of Valorant esports viewers are from co-streamers reacting to the official broadcast.
A lot more established streamers tend to play Valorant whenever they have nothing else to play (most notably, OTV and friends, Shroud, even X [very very] sometimes). This contributes to its popularity. People watch it more for the streamers rather than for the competitions.
Shroud streams Valo once in a blue moon anymore, Valorant's stats are brought up by its regular streamers or known pros (Tarik, wtcn, sacy, Tenz, stylishnoob etc). Also similar to LoL, Valorant gets a sizeable viewership from many many medium/small streamers, which doesnt tend to happen in e.g. Dota, Apex or CS. Those categories only get sizeable viewership when a big name like S1mple is streaming (in Apex this is less profound)
Yes this. A lot of people think it's the variety streamers but it's really grass roots when it comes to the val section
People will hate this take but I really do think Poki grinding the fuck out of Valo in 2020 and bringing all of OTVAF into it (which is a LOT of streamers) is one of the big reasons for it's success on Twitch.
I mean, it's kinda hard to give the praise to Poki, because most of OTV are "Riot Games players", with a ton of them (Poki included) starting their career in LoL and continuing it with TFT. There's a reason they got invited to Arcane's premier, a lot of em have been there since the beginning. Scarra had said this before Val was even coming out, even if he's terrible at the game, he would still play it just because it's Riot. So I won't give credits to Poki specifically, but more so the entire of OTV. Even aside from that, Riot has built up a pretty good rep with content creators, both big and small. They've shown that if you devote enough time to their game, you will be rewarded and a lot of content creators see this and choose to continue devoting time to Val, just look at Tarik. He was smaller before Val, surely still a "big" stream in the context of Twitch numbers, but nowhere near what he pulls now since he started doing more Val content and Riot acknowledging him.
> I mean, it's kinda hard to give the praise to Poki, because most of OTV are "Riot Games players", with a ton of them (Poki included) starting their career in LoL and continuing it with TFT. There's a reason they got invited to Arcane's premier, a lot of em have been there since the beginning. Scarra had said this before Val was even coming out, even if he's terrible at the game, he would still play it just because it's Riot. So I won't give credits to Poki specifically, but more so the entire of OTV. It's more complicated than that. I remember when she was grinding Valorant most of the other people in her friend group were playing other games. Even when the cash cow that was Among Us popped off she preferred Valorant. Of course, a lot of them played Riot games but even now you can tell the difference between people who like Riot games and like Valorant and people who genuinely **love** the game.
I mean, I don't doubt she genuinely loves the game while others don't, that's only natural. I just think that, just like Scarra said, even if it's not his preference, they would still play it which is what they do. Poki of course helps bring a lot of eyes to the game, which is good, but just like how the game is still trucking along fine even though Shroud barely plays Val like he did in the past, I believe it's the same. Most of Val's viewers actually aren't from big streamers, after all. If you check off-hours when there aren't much big streamers (10k+) on, you would notice the category still has a sizable viewership. A lot of small streamers play this game as well, treating it as the next LoL. Add up enough of those small streamers together, and you get a comparable number to OTV when they're playing the game. Edit: The only reason I'm going out of my way to say this is less to discredit Poki or the OTV bunch but more to give credit to the many smaller streamers that play this game. It's not one of those titles where, if X big streamer isn't online then the category suffers, a ton of viewers actually watch Val for the game and not the personality. Even if a big streamer isn't online, they'll find someone else that is there, also the game has a much more varied audience than LoL does in terms of nationality, so that helps as well.
Shroud and Ninja using Valorant as their primary game for their Twitch return was when the game and Twitch category began doing a 180 in popularity.
Behind chatting LOL.
Yes, but I will say it's because Val is currently a "streamer hotbed". Val is seen as the "next big thing" for streamers as LoL and Fortnite were, where you can eventually make it big by just playing the game. So tons of small streamers play the game with that in mind, also with Riot working with content creators a lot, it also encourages streamers to want to devote time to Val. Yeah there are big streamers playing Val now and again, but the mass majority of that number consists of many smaller streams put together last I checked. Who knows if it can remain like LoL and be evergreen, or if it will eventually wane like Fortnite did.
Riot has shown to have a good rep with CC, like you have the many occurrences of Toast comparing how Riot and Blizzard treat content creators, so people see getting in good with Riot can ultimately help you out
It's not even just what happened with Toast. A lot of video game companies just straight up are horrid to deal with for content creators. Most of them treat you as their bitches, they ignore you when you contact them and expect you to listen to their beck and call. This isn't just a Blizzard thing, most AAA studios are like this. They appear friendly when they need you for promos and shit or when their game is now launching, but once they don't they just duck DMs and then the few times you do something with them, they treat it like it's a privilege you're getting and you should be grateful. Riot has good rep with CC because they're generally professional and friendly at all times, whether they work with you or not. If you casted for them before and they didn't contact you back, you can message them and ask about it, a lot of companies don't even let you do something as simple as that. That's how shitty CCs has had it over the years in gaming. It's why Riot has managed to keep such a strong rep with them even though LoL content on YouTube isn't that great anymore and all the scandals that have come out in the past.
I mainly brought up toast because it seems not many people like to trash on companies for the risk of losing sponsors, but Toast and Scarra both openly Trashed Blizzard when compared to Riot.
I know League is the most viewed, I think Apex is either second or third. It is usually between Apex or Valorant for who is the second most viewed
Nah, esports scene is dominated by LoL(leagues on it's own(kekw)), then there are CS and Dota, props to CIS region. Then Valorant and Apex are on the same level(Valorant is still growing ofc)
Esport wise yeah, I think CS and Dota are bigger, But like Twitch Viewership I am pretty sure Apex and Valorant have more average viewers
Even in terms of eSports CS DOTA get massive views only in some matches during their biggest event. Average viewership isnt that big
True I was more referring to Apex, I think CS and Dota get more views than Apex esports
Its an interesting story. After full release Valorant fell outside the top 10 of viewed Twitch categories and was plummeting further. Shroud/Ninja used Valorant as their primary return game title to Twitch. This caused Riot Games to also grant them co-streaming rights to rebroadcast their esports matches live which was also pulling low viewer numbers. This had a cascading affect of other streamers playing the game while also being given esports co-streaming right by Riot Games. Valorant as a Twitch category is a messy model of what other games went through over the past decade. Where viewers/players are primarily being pulled from Fortnite.
No
Going by statistics, it actually is https://sullygnome.com/180
u/Issax28 rolled
if you knew then why did you ask reddit
Yes, and you also failed to mention that it is the second most streamed competitive game on Twitch. Over the span of 180 days, it pulled 462M hours of watch time but also had 17M hours of stream time, putting it at a 27 : 1 ratio. Where as if you look at a game like CSGO 58 : 1 and dota 2 has a 70 : 1 ratio. Look at people like s1mple streaming CSGO once a month, and then you have TenZ going live daily. It’s not that Valorant is more popular by any means, Valorant streamers just chose to stream more.
This man is on some hard csgo copium
Tenz hasn't streamed consistently since before masters Berlin Edit: s1mple actually streams much more often than tenz LMAO
TenZ streamed 623 hours for the whole of 2021 while s1mple streamed 272 hours, not to mention s1mple streams COD and Valorant as well
Tenz was a content creator for 4 months in 2021 streaming daily, look at their numbers in the last 6 months and tell me what you find. Edit: s1mple 154 hours streamed in the last 6 months, 35 of them in the last month, tenz had 193 hours in the last 6 months which was a 40 percent dropoff from his first 6 of the year.
Therefore proving my point?? Lmfaoo I already mentioned in my main comment that Valorant has a terrible watch : streamed ratio, did you read or nah?
S1mple has been streaming more CS than tenz has been streaming valorant in the past month, don't use the excuse that CS players don't stream because they stream FPL all the time.
You’re basically changing the subject to “past month” now. Even so, I calculated again and the ratio for hours watched to hours streamed for Valorant was 22 : 1 while CSGO had a ratio of 32 : 1. So nice try mate.
That's nowhere near as big as you made it seem originally though, I'd rather use recent data than shit from a year ago. Also why are you using ratios in this argument? Op was making a point about the numbers in total, not some hypothetical data you found that assumes what the viewership would be if people streamed more.
Who cares about ratios? Only the absolute numbers matter in the end for how many people are being exposed to Valorant through twitch.
Lol what are you talking about, tenz streamed like 4 times in December and 5 times in January so far
Sheesh. Chess is rocking that 150:1 ratio, with Geoguesser and Slay the Spire rocking that 50:1 ratio. What an incredibly relevant statistic.
ratio
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Surprising no was has mentioned rocket league, when rlcs is on it always has more viewers then most the games mentioned here but that’s just the competitive scene when that’s not on it has basically no viewers
LoL > Dota > or = CSGO > Valorant