Valorant is a huge success on Twitch and is generating record numbers of viewers. But how did it come to be? Were the top streamers paid by Riot to play Valorant? Riot has now issued a detailed statement: There are no sponsored streams, they say.
This is how successful Valorant is on Twitch: The Beta of Valorant was represented in April 2020 with an average of 502,852 viewers across various Twitch streams. This makes Valorant easily the top title on Amazon’s streaming platform. By comparison, the next 5 top categories had not even half of this viewership in April 2020 (as of April 28, 2020):
- Just Chatting: 193,381 viewers on average
- League of Legends: 189,792 viewers on average
- Fortnite: 133,729 viewers on average
- CS:GO: 119,075 viewers on average
- GTA 5: 103,444 viewers on average
Additionally, there are more records. Valorant was viewed for over 34 million hours in one day. In one day, 4000 years of Valorant were viewed.
The reason for the many views is that players can only get Beta access for Valorant by watching streams. However, before every streamer could distribute access for the beta, there were only a few selected top streamers who actively had such Twitch drops in their streams.
Were all of the streamers paid by Riot to play and promote the game?
Riot explains how to attract Twitch streamers to Valorant
This is how Riot proceeded: In an article on the site Engadget, Riot’s marketing chief Nikki Lewis was interviewed on the subject. She first stated that they had contacted hundreds of streamers and influencers from around the world.
They asked the streamers to stream Valorant during the beta and to offer access via drops. It was important to select hardcore shooter fans who understand such games and like the game. However, no money was involved:
During the closed beta, we did not pay any streamer to stream Valorant. Our goal is to maintain a community for years, even decades. Therefore, we strive to build a long-term relationship with streamers and look for things of value where we can support the business foundations that they [the streamers] want to build.
What did the streamers then receive? But what did Riot offer the streamers? Lewis did not provide any details, but she stated that they wanted to build an “ecosystem” that would “be beneficial for all of us.” And indeed, so far everyone has benefited from Valorant:
- The streamers received fantastic viewership numbers
- Riot received massive free promotion for their game
- Amazon benefited from the increased user volume on Twitch
Moreover, Riot Games has always been open to influencers:
The reason we are so popular with streamers is that we aim to get to know them, build deeper relationships with them, understand their feedback on the game, and play the game with them. We have many developers who play with influencers and simply embrace and welcome them. This has been an explicit marketing strategy of ours.
This is what lies behind it: If you listen to Twitch streamers, it probably wasn’t even necessary for Riot Games to pay them, because Valorant brought in so many viewers and thus revenues through the Twitch drops that almost everyone wanted to be part of it (Dr Disrespect, by his own account, did not):
- for established streamers at the top of Twitch like summit1g or Myth, it was the chance to do something new and entertain their viewers
- for second-tier streamers, Valorant offered the chance for a breakthrough – streamers like Craig “ONSCREEN” Shanon say they have gained 500,000 followers and 14,000 subscribers through Valorant. Just the subscriptions bring about $30,000 a month. Advertising and donations come on top.
This is probably the ecosystem Riot Games is talking about.
However, things with Valorant on Twitch and the Twitch drops are also not running smoothly. As some streamers let their channel run 24 hours a day with partially recorded content, the whole situation around the coveted Twitch drops is slowly becoming absurd and many are getting annoyed.
