Pros react to VALORANT beta, spells competition for Fortnite

This week, Riot Games released a closed beta for their flagship FPS shooter: VALORANT

Professional Fortnite players around the globe have taken interest in the new game on the block: Valorant. The tactical first person shooter game combines key aspects of front running Esports titles Counter Strike: Global Offensive and Overwatch into one highly competitive mashup. Could this be the “Fortnite killer”?

For more context, we need to back up a few steps and talk about Fortnite’s history as both a game and Esports title. After blowing up in early 2018, Epic Games would capitalize on the hit by injecting over $100 million dollars for the 2019 competitive season. Although the game has consistently lost interest since the parabolic spike, it still remains a top game on Twitch and YouTube

But Fortnite hasn’t been without wars over the masses. In February 2019, a large portion of players briefly split from Fortnite in sight of greener pasture: Apex Legends. EA’s take on Battle Royale would directly compete against a flourishing Fortnite (and dying PUBG). The numbers were promising at first, clocking almost 700,000 live viewers at launch

statistics courtesy of TwitchTracker

But hype would quickly die down, and Apex’s numbers are just a fragment of what we once knew. These days, Apex Legends is lucky to pass 25,000 concurrent viewers on Twitch, the leading live streaming platform

Now enter player 3: Valorant. Riot’s new spawn is sending the world (and Fortnite players) in an absolute frenzy. Valorant’s closed beta just launched 2 days ago, and early reporting indicates it will be a much larger threat to Fortnite than Apex Legends could have ever put up. Day 1 of gameplay garnered a staggering 1.7 million live viewers on Twitch, compared to Fortnite’s all time high of 1.69m

Let’s not get too ahead of ourselves here, though. Numbers may be inflated because to enter VALORANT’s closed beta you need to watch Twitch streams. On the other hand, Apex Legends also spent millions of dollars for their day 1 launch promotion to pull top names like Cloakzy, 72hrs, and TimTheTatman. Riot’s cost? $0.00

.@Slasher first reported this, but find it pretty fascinating. @PlayVALORANT influencer content, as of this tweet, has 941,000 viewers and @riotgames didn't pay a cent for people to participate in last weekend's bootcamp. The same can't be said for other games.

— Jacob Wolf (@JacobWolf) April 3, 2020

The beta access is Valorant’s key to free advertising and it’s working like a charm… I’m sure the streamers aren’t complaining either. Hopefully it’s clear that VALORANT is postulating itself as a huge threat to any other competitive shooter game for years to come

As competitive Fortnite players continue to grow frustrated with the state of the game, we’re seeing more and more shifts to Valorant

Ex-Faze clan player Jaomock was one of the top players leave Fortnite’s competitive scene to fully focus on Valorant

KEEPING THIS SHORT......

Read: https://t.co/BcEjGadTuN

— J a o m o c k (@Jaomock) April 5, 2020

This sentiment is one among hundreds of top competitive players that have come to the end of their ropes with Fortnite. Additionally, the negative sentiment for Fortnite is quickly turning to positive sentiment for Valorant. A much more “traditional” game with spicy character based twists could really be what sends Fortnite off its pedestal

This game is ?? pic.twitter.com/o3ep2KFJEJ

— Bizzle (@FaZeBizzle) April 8, 2020

It’s hard to scroll down the Twitter timeline without Fortnite players praising Riot’s work. Even extremely popular players like Bizzle, who has no intention of leaving Fortnite, still finds the game to be highly competitive and tempting

Another consideration should be org interest. Teams like Faze and 100Thieves with a huge presence in Fortnite can now focus more on structured team building than content creation as Valorant continues to gain market share. Top organizations might just be what pushes Valorant into the top spot

At the end of the day, we’ll just have to wait and see if Valorant survives the test of time and lives up to the hype. Until then, we’ll keep you posted on Twitter