We’re back with another instalment of the State of the Community, where we bring up some numbers, ask certain questions and read through the lines of it all. This time around, we’re looking at Valorant and addressing the numerous comments addressing the title as a ‘CS:GO killer’ or others calling it a ‘CS:GO clone’. What truly is the extent of Valorant’s relationship with CS:GO and how likely are they to affect one another in the future?
In order to tackle such a topic, we’ll be journeying through Valorant’s story so far and seeing how CS:GO has been affected at every step of the way.
Valorant’s Beta – 2020’s Biggest Game of the Year
Valorant’s beta was simply incredible, as Riot Games pitched it to the community with just enough incentive to play it, garnering the world’s curiosity and close to one million regularly concurrent viewers on Twitch during its beta. Riot Games allowed personalities to test the title before its closed beta release and by the end of it all, the closed beta had registered over 460 million viewing hours and three million daily players!
The world was in love and seemingly, was desperate for release. On the whole, the game may have needed some polishing, but this did not discourage the community. Everyone quietly hoped that the momentum would be carried onto the full release, though sadly enough as you’ll read soon enough, it didn’t.
Now one has to question – from which titles did these players come from?
CS:GO Player Count Drops
According to SteamCharts, a likely candidate would have to be the CounterStrike: Global Offensive player base. Yes, although the recurring comment of ‘CS:GO always loses players in summer’ may hold some truth to it, this drop was timed perfectly with the release of Valorant.
Of course, this is all very logical – titles such as Dota 2 and League of Legends are constantly exchanging player bases as individuals experiment between the two MOBAs, with Dota 2’s player becoming the lowest it ever was earlier this year since 2014. Direct competitors will always pull on the same audience: and as shown by the above demographic from SteamCharts, CS:GO lost over 100,000 players during the run of the beta.
It’s not stretching the imagination too far to imagine that the majority of these players flocked over to Valorant.
Beyond the fact that Valorant was ‘something fresh’, the title also offered certain features as a tactical shooter which CS:GO still hadn’t given its players after 8 long years. Namely, these include the following:
- 128-tick servers
- Better anti-cheat engine
- Better dedication to allow high performance on old PCs
I’d say the main splitting point is that tick-rate: in a genre defined by minute movements and quick snaps, a doubling in tick rate can feel like you’re playing a different game entirely.
Comparing Valorant’s concurrent base of 3,000,000 in the beta, as aforementioned, to CS:GO’s usual 1.2 million – many were quick to spell the ‘death’ of CS:GO. At least, that’s what everybody was saying until June 2nd.
Valorant’s Release – Underwhelming Viewership
The release date of June 2nd for Valorant had a tonne of excitement behind it – Riot Games’ marketing team had done an exceptional job in attracting a community towards it and now this was it.
Unfortunately, with its release, Valorant failed to pick up where it left off and viewership numbers dwindled too. The following chart from Escharts.com depicts an overwhelming loss of 600,000 in the week of release in terms of viewers.
Shouldn’t viewership peak, if anything, at release and then eventually, die down with time?
Technically, for Valorant, it did, just in the beta release. Since they didn’t change many things from the closed beta, there wasn’t anything to go crazy over except that everything was just a touch more official.
There are two more reasons as to why Valorant’s viewership may have flunked:
- During the beta, the dropping of beta keys created an atmosphere of viewer retention and hence, even uninterested parties were amused with the possibility of gaining early access
- The timing of the release with international political issues – the situation of the world and Riot Games’ inability to postpone did not help either
While Valorant sat
outside the top viewed games, CS:GO comfortably
maintained its usual position as the usual summer players began to leave too.
We’ll tackle the nature of both titles as titles not focused on viewership
later on – but there’s another aspect of Valorant’s
release which needs to be addressed.
Valorant’s Release – Metacritic Reviews
After seeing the underwhelming viewership analysis, the player feedback should also be considered. Based on 2302 ratings on Metacritic, a user score of 5.6 is cause for concern despite critics giving the title an 81. Here’s a randomly selected rating of 5:
“Clean aesthetics, players highly visible which is perfect for competitive play. Guns are available regardless of attack/defense which is nice. Abilities are interesting but it will take time to see the meta really develop. Buy system isn’t punishing, can undo purchases before round start and teammates can request buys which is nice.
Maps leave something to be desired though. Especially with how much control is given to both teams before round starts, you’re left with redundant engagements and it feels as though there isn’t much variation in regards to how you can play for map control.
Again this could change over time with map updates and how abilities are utilized, but it did leave me a bit unsatisfied.Expect the AC to not be perfect out of the box, they are “deep learning” just like Valve has been for CSGO. They were dishonest in that regard when initially rolling out this game.” – djones456
Is this general rating of 5.6 deserved?
Personally, I don’t think so. I believe that many players went into Valorant unaware of what a tactical shooter is, in that it’s often slow, methodical and brutal if you’re not aware of the most basic in-game mechanics. I remember the first few times that I tried to play CS:GO and how lost I felt and downright frustrated, especially as my preference is Call of Duty.
I believe that multiple players dived in blindly behind all the hype without knowing the true nature of the genre, so I’d give the Metacritic page some time and the score will probably go up.
Meanwhile, I’ll have to state that CS:GO has always been critically acclaimed, though nobody can deny the fact that all 8 years have been used to refine and perfect the tilte, earning the User Score of 7.4 whole-heartedly.
It’s looking rough for Valorant, but it isn’t the end.
The Future of Valorant and CS:GO – Viewership and Competitive
To conclude, we’ll throw our gaze to the future – how will the two titles continue to entwine with one another?
Firstly, I’d like to address the issue of viewership counts. Many tried to uphold Valorant to the standard of titles such as Fortnite, but the truth is that outside of a competitive setting, watching a tactical shooter can be quite dreary.
This is true for both CS:GO and Valorant as gameplay is somewhat slower and highly tactical – conversely, this is what makes competition that much more thrilling. The same goes for Rainbow Six Siege which is also a tactical shooter and has similar viewership characteristics.
So, in order to decide whether Valorant is failing or not, I’d wait for the first set of official competitive events where the viewership will undoubtedly pick up as it does for CS:GO.
The question that follows is – what if a Valorant event happens on the same date of as CS:GO event? Right now, if push comes to shove, I’d expect CS:GO to yield more attention due to the loyalty of its fan-base.
Out of everything I’ve said in this episode of State of the Community, bear one thing in mind: Valorant is still young. True, it may not have found the early success that CS:GO found when it released, but it still has a shot in forging something new. As an esports journalist, I’ll never deter a title from trying to take that next step and encourage esports – only time will tell.
