Riot Games is the gaming studio that utilizes the streaming platform Twitch perfectly. The finale of the LoL Worlds 2021 in League of Legends was watched by even more people worldwide at its peak than Sony’s PS5 presentation. Riot Games successfully promoted its online shooter Valorant through Twitch and is now even pushing a Netflix hit with Arcane.
How big was the LoL Worlds 2021 on Twitch?
- According to Axios, the finale of the LoL Worlds on November 6 had a total of 3,111,854 viewers at its peak simultaneously on Twitch.
- That’s about 50,000 more viewers than the Sony PlayStation 5 event on September 16, 2020, which held the previous record.
- Worldwide, outside of Twitch, over 4 million people simultaneously are said to have watched the finale.
How is that possible? League of Legends is years ahead of comparable titles as an “E-sport” title. Riot Games has installed a professional show with casters who also act as influencers, with analysis and interviews on the sidelines for years.
They elevate the players being broadcast, bring emotions into the game, and convey a lot of knowledge about LoL, the teams, and the players to the viewers.
During the action at the LoL Worlds, the casters got excited:
Over time, real legends form around players and teams. It doesn’t matter that all the big stars right now are South Koreans or Chinese and that players and teams from the West have hardly any say internationally.
Throughout the year, players in the USA and Europe cheer for their teams – during the last 2 weeks of the LoL year, they just watch from the sidelines as the superstars from Asia compete for the world championship title.
LoL is discussed like basketball or soccer. Many fans speculate where the big stars from Europe, North America, and Asia will play next year. Fans have their favorite teams and favorite players. There’s regularly some drama: LoL is not just exciting when being played, but also everything around it.
In 2020, Riot Games already used Twitch to make Valorant a hit
This is how Riot Games utilized Twitch for Valorant: How well Riot Games understood the Twitch platform was evident in 2020 with their shooter Valorant.
It wasn’t an incredibly exciting game: a tactical shooter like Counter-Strike with some elements of Overwatch. Valorant was designed from the start as a hardcore e-sports shooter.
Riot Games simply limited the beta access and said: “Those who want to play Valorant must watch a Twitch streamer play Valorant”, then the viewer had the chance to receive lottery beta access through Twitch Drops.
This relatively simple trick led to a gold rush on Twitch:
- Viewers wanted to see Valorant
- Streamers wanted to show Valorant
Streamers played much longer than usual, even leaving recordings running at night and making a fortune from the hype.
This is how they are now using Twitch for Arcane: At the end of 2021 Riot Games ventures with “Arcane” on Netflix. Again, they used Twitch to promote the show – especially since the LoL Worlds were approaching, this was a perfect opportunity:
- Riot Games made Arcane part of the LoL Worlds 2021 and streamed the first episode on Riot Games’ Twitch channel.
- They also used Twitch Drops again to promote the show further.
According to numbers from Axios, Arcane reached about 1.84 million concurrent viewers at its peak through Twitch and viewing parties. This really gave the series a boost. The result is number 1 on Netflix in 38 countries.
What’s behind it: Even at Riot Games, not everything is perfect. Internally, they have had many problems: They went through the sexism scandal years ago, which Blizzard is currently grappling with. Players have always complained about LoL and Valorant and will always find something they don’t like: sometimes a hero is too strong, sometimes too weak. And there’s always something missing.
Despite all the criticism: how Riot Games manages to present their titles and use Twitch for it is truly exemplary and shows how in touch Riot Games is with current trends.
In the future, Riot Games wants to develop many more games:
Because Legends of Runeterra is so well made, I have high hopes for the LoL MMORPG
