Riot’s upcoming shooter Valorant became an instant hit even before entering its closed beta. Ever since then the game has taken the first spot by viewership numbers on Twitch, but are they all true?
The most-viewed game on Twitch. Where once stood League of Legends and Fortnite is now the domain of Valorant. Riot’s new game is without a doubt the most viewed one on the popular streaming platform. There’s just one question – How many are actually viewing? Many were there out of interest for the new title, but others simply wanted to get their hands on a key.
Valorant is currently in closed beta and the only way to get your account entitled is by watching streams of the upcoming shooter. Many people would open a stream, mute it and leave the tab running in the background so is it really viewing then? Furthermore, when people get a key will the viewership numbers plummet? While the number of eligible streamers was rather limited initially it eventually increased to everyone who’s actively streaming Valorant. This brought some new problems like people simply running recordings instead of live-streaming. Why would they do that? Thanks to the “Drops” program, viewers were much more inclined to join and watch it in hopes of getting a key. In the meantime, the streamers can simply leave an already recorded video and reap the benefits. Many well-known streamers criticized the practice and cited that it goes the Twitch TOS. It wasn’t long before Twitch themselves took action.
We've heard concerns about creators continuously streaming VODs while tagging the channel as "Live" to farm Valorant Drops. This harms the integrity of our Drops Program so we've updated our Community Guidelines to clarify that cheating any Twitch rewards system is prohibited.
— Twitch Support (@TwitchSupport) April 28, 2020
As a result, the streaming platform updated their Community Guidelines. According to the new and reworked ones, Twitch can suspend accounts if they’re cheating a rewards system like the Drops one. Additionally, the platform will prohibit invalid tags and headers which were used by some of the fake streamers.
- READ MORE: Valorant Patch 0.49 is out
Pretty much all of the big Valorant streamers like Summit1G, TimTheTatman, and others were in support of the latest decision made by the streaming platform. It’s hard to tell if the measures will have the effect, everyone, hopes for, but so far they’ve found some success. Even with the fake streamers off Valorant will most likely continue to dominate the viewership rankings and in the case it gets dethrones it’ll probably be Riot’s other title – LoL. Stay tuned for more Valorant news.
