Valorant was hyped even before the beta and became a huge hit on Twitch right from the start. More than a million viewers tuned in, surpassing Fortnite’s previously most successful event. The trick of the game: Twitch Drops. To get into the beta, you have to watch Valorant on Twitch.
How many viewers did Valorant have on Twitch at launch? At the launch of the closed beta of Valorant, things were wild on Twitch. A whopping 1,727,481 viewers were recorded at the same time.
Is this a new Twitch record? No, because the top spot for concurrent viewers is still held by League of Legends (LoL) with 1,776,075 concurrent viewers in 2019.
However, the fact that Valorant had only about 50,000 fewer viewers than the Twitch leader on its first day is an achievement in itself. LoL and Valorant share the same developer, so Riot now has two top games to show on Twitch.
SO CLOSE YET SO FAR pic.twitter.com/bFKYNxMy3h
— The Esports Writer (@FionnOnFire) April 7, 2020
What’s the deal with the Fortnite record? LoL didn’t beat Valorant, but it did outshine the competition from Epic. The battle royale shooter Fortnite had “only” 1.69 million concurrent viewers on its most successful Twitch day. That was the final of the Fortnite World Championship 2019. Valorant easily surpassed that with 1.72 million viewers.
But how did this massive success come about?
This is why Valorant is so successful on Twitch
This is the reason for the success: Valorant was purposefully hyped by Riot Games on Twitch. They brought in prominent streamers early on to showcase the game. Since the streamers enjoyed it immensely, it also resonated well with their followers, and many were eager for the beta launch on April 7, 2020.
However, the main reason was Riot’s tactic to make the access keys for the closed beta dependent on Twitch Drops. To play in the beta, you need to have a key, which is only given if you diligently watch streams with activated drops for Valorant.
As a result, a massive number of interested players gathered in the streams of the selected streamers, hoping for their codes. This went so far that the developers eventually had to temporarily disable the drops to protect the servers from overload.
Moreover, the massive influx of viewers led to a new record: Over 4 million concurrent viewers were recorded on Twitch for the first time. The 1.72 million from Valorant played a significant role in this new record.
