Valorant is a free-to-download shooter in a 5v5 format developed for PC by Riot Games, also creator of the ultra-successful League of Legends, and owned by Chinese video game giant Tencent.
This game, designed to be competitive, has its advantage in two key elements: on the one hand, it has illustrations in the form of a comic that is not demanding with the PC, great character design and skills, as well as a game mode that makes it widely recognizable. On the other hand, it has the Riot seal, which gives it great performance without the need for highly specialized hardware, a server infrastructure and anti-cheat software that privileges the competition format.
After reaching its first year on June 2, 2021, Valorant announced that it has more than 14 million average monthly players and although it is still far from the dominant free to play shooting games, such as Fortnite, with 350 million players. monthly players, or the 100 million Apex Legends, Valorant seeks to compete significantly in the genre.
“One of our main goals this first year was to earn the trust and respect of the global FPS community and show them that Valorant will always uphold the fundamentals of a worthwhile competitive and tactical shooter game,” said Anna Donlon, Executive Producer of Valorant at Riot Games.
“Seeing that our growing community of players recognize and value what we are trying to do with Valorant is beyond what we could hope for, and we are delighted to be able to offer the same competitive experience to more players around the world soon.”
Amplify your audience
One of the factors that has led the title to position itself relatively far from the spectacular numbers of other genres is to maintain its exclusive use on PC, while the leaders seek cross play. For example, Fortnite reached 125 million monthly players in its first year.
In search of this overcrowding of the game, Valorant announced that its mobile version will arrive in the coming months. In the same way, Riot launched League of Legends: Wild Rift , as a way to get closer to new users. The movement, then, seeks to reach the immense number of mobile gamers and replicate an adaptation model without the need for large hardware investment.
And it is that the mobile video game market is one of the most relevant. Only in Mexico there are more than 70 million mobile players, according to ICU, and it is also one of the sectors where there is great competition for being more relevant. In this context it will be important to see how it competes against titles such as Free Fire, PUBG Mobile or Call of Duty Mobile.
In addition, Valorant recently announced a partnership with KAYAK, one of the world’s leading tourism search engines, to develop a new map based on a Caribbean island, in the middle of the Bermuda Triangle, called Breeze.
This alliance, in addition to proposing a paradisiacal space that can be visited either as a player or through streamers, seeks to bring together more casual players and enjoy a tourist environment at the same time that they get involved in the competitive format.
It is worth mentioning that competition has been one of the most relevant elements for this title. Less than a year after his debut, he launched the VALORANT Champions Tour (VCT). This worldwide competition format lasts one year and consists of three levels: Challengers, Masters and Champions.
In the 2021 Champions Tour and the first international tournament, the “VCT: Masters stage 2” held in Reykjavik, Iceland, the final match between Sentinels and FNATIC gathered more than 1 million simultaneous spectators, as well as an average of more of 800.00 spectators per minute.
We will see how Valorant performs in the coming months, especially against a company like Riot Games, relying on the formula that has led him to have unparalleled successes, using the advertising, competition and alliance development machinery to make this game a player leader. monthly and in the esports area.
