The newest release from Riot Games, Valorant, was recently in closed beta. Closed betas usually mean that very few people actually have access to the game, but Riot was handing out access keys left and right. A lot of people took advantage of Riot’s generosity, and intensively played the game. It turns out that about three million people played Valorant each day, according to Riot Games.
Valorant caused quite an uproar within the gaming community. Valorant streams on Twitch garnered an impressive 470 million hours, 34 million of those happening on the peak day. At one point, 1.7 million people were watching Valorant streams on Twitch, so it is safe to say that the fanbase is really excited about this upcoming release.
Counter-Strike: Global Offense is considered to be the closest competitor to the upcoming Valorant. It just broke its record for the most people playing the game at one point back in March, getting to the astonishing milestone of 1 million concurrent players. This is especially impressive when you consider the fact that Counter-Strike: Global Offense originally launched eight years ago. Despite its age, it is, at all times, one of the most played games on Steam, occasionally taking the top spot. Valorant might attract a lot of attention, but what really matters is that their numbers consistently remain high.
Valorant’s closed beta has just ended yesterday. Fortunately for gamers, you do not have to wait too much before you can play it again, and, this time, it is actually the full version. Riot is going to reset all the accounts and prepare a new game mode, known as agent map. This full release will take place on June 2, so the following week is going to be extremely eventful for all gamers and especially for the fanbase of Riot Games, which has got a lot of surprises as they have rebranded themselves.