Valorant is clearly gunning for a big future in esports. The game has only entered its beta on April 7, yet there have already been a number of Valorant tournaments, most notably the 100 Thieves Invitational, the T1 Invitational and Twitch Rivals. Are all these tournaments too much? Former pro summit1g certainly thinks so...
Too many cooks…
Streamer summit1g is not one to shy away from a controversial opinion and the ex CS:GO pro has criticized Valve many times for how they are handling the game. So far, summit1g is positively smitten with Riots shooter, but is worried regarding the number of Valorant tournaments:
Less is more. Clearly, summit1g believes in that sentiment. Good thing that LoL and Valorant share the same developer.
Is Riot Games getting ready for a Valorant league?
The Twitch Rivals tournament, 100 Thieves Invitational and the recent T1 tournament drew big names and even bigger numbers. Twitch Rivals in particular now stands as the second most watched event in Twitch streaming history with 1,73m concurrent viewers.
Apparently, Riot has been privately meeting with esports organizations already to give them a roadmap and discuss the game’s future. This is surprising as most predicted that, after the game’s release, it would still be a year or two removed from official competition. Which organizations Riot has met with and what they discussed is unclear and Riot Games has put them under strict non-disclosure-agreements.
Are they putting together official Valorant tournaments or setting up a franchised league? It’s a guessing game at this point and there is no further direct comment by Riot on the matter.
However Riot’s senior director of esports Whalen Rozelle released this statement on Riot’s Valorant Website:
“We're overwhelmed by the initial interest and excitement in Valorant. We have massive dreams for what this game can be as an esport, and we're excited to embark on this long esports journey with our players. Our primary focus early on will be forming partnerships with players, content creators, tournament organizers and developers -- unlocking them to help us to build the Valorant ecosystem."
Counter Strike players have been dominating the Valorant scene
If we’re getting official Valorant esports this soon, it’ll be interesting to see if a certain trend continues:
Thus far, CS:GO players have dominated the Valorant tournament scene. In fact, a squad including the first two officially signed Valorant pros Brax and AZK won both the 100 Thieves Invitational and the T1 Invitational. How fitting, as they are also signed to T1.
Whether this trend continues or not, remains to be seen, but with Ranked Mode soon being introduced to the beta, people will log more and more hours in the game and Valorant proficiency should eventually outweigh CS:GO proficiency.
After all, the now infamous first match between the Valorant devs and a who’s who of streamers, including former CS:GO prodigy shroud, saw the Valorant devs absolutely whoop the streamers and they did so by correctly using and coordinating Valorant’s key feature: Hero abilities.
With all these Valorant tournaments going on and all eyes on the game, Riot is surely getting enough data to set up an exciting esports scene for its first shooter.
We’ll find out soon enough, until then, keep it here at EarlyGame for all things Valorant.