With a 3-year delay, the shooter Valorant arrived in China in July 2023 and is celebrating huge success there. Tencent is one step closer to world dominance. Because in China, there has been a gap in gaming and esports since the crisis at Activision Blizzard. Riot Games and its parent company Tencent have now joyfully seized this gap with Valorant.
Why did Riot Games initially have bad luck? Riot Games actually had bad luck.
- China is the largest PC gaming market in the world and also a huge market for esports. Riot actually wanted to get its shooter Valorant there, which was released in the West on June 2, 2020
- But games that want to be released in China need a license and there has been an anti-gaming climate from “the party” in recent years: From 2021, no new games were allowed in China for a year and a half. It was feared that youth had fallen prey to gaming addiction and were ruining their eyesight
- In November 2021, “the party” then announced: The youth of China has been cured, their gaming addiction was exorcised. And so, Valorant received its license in December 2022 after all. On July 12, 2023, Valorant was finally able to launch: It was a huge success
For many years, “Riot Games” was a one-game studio, focusing on League of Legends. With Valorant, that changed:
Overwatch disappears from China – Valorant fills the gap
Why is Valorant now so successful in China? The Chinese software giant Tencent (mascot: penguin) and Riot Games are now celebrating huge success in China with Valorant.
This is also because Activision Blizzard and their shooter Overwatch had to withdraw from China at the beginning of 2023 after a crisis with their local partner NetEase.
Overwatch had established itself as a shooter and esports title in China over the years. 3 teams from Guangzhou, Hangzhou, and Shanghai had invested a lot of money in the Overwatch League.
According to the analysis company Niko Partners, Valorant has now filled a “gap” in the PC gamer market left by Overwatch.
With the departure of Overwatch, a large esports system has also collapsed, into which Valorant now enters.
Tencent plans to invest $138 million in Valorant’s esports over the next 3 years.
Riot Games uses LoL to push Valorant in China
This is how the launch succeeded: Tencent took advantage of the Chinese enthusiasm for League of Legends: the most successful PC game in China.
Players were promised exclusive rewards if they linked their LoL account with Valorant.
Valorant is already a great success at launch
How successful was it now? Tencent says the launch of Valorant in China was the “most successful PC game release” based on users on launch day and the most viewed new game on Huya, the Twitch of China.
Valorant has already reached 3 times more viewers in the first week than the previous shooter favorite in China, Crossfire, according to Niko Partners.
It is said: The launch day was so successful that there were queues and server issues. Tencent announced multiple times publicly that they would increase capacity.
Tencent has been working for years to secure its dominance in gaming. Here in the West, Riot Games (League of Legends) is their most important possession. Tencent owns 100% of Riot Games:
A gaming company is bigger than Sony, Nintendo, Microsoft – And their crest is a damn penguin
