The historic viewership that VALORANT has managed to pull in over the past week since its closed beta released on Twitch has led many content creators to adjust their schedules as a way to capitalize on demand.
With many rabid fans watching marathon sessions of VALORANT in an attempt to get a Twitch drop that gives access to the closed beta itself, streamers are streaming more and more. But some are finding creative ways to farm viewers who are looking to earn drops—and Summit1g isn’t happy about it.
While many content creators have been livestreaming, others have started a practice of “going live” and playing a rebroadcast of a previous stream. Though Twitch has a system set up for playing reruns, broadcasters are instead using their broadcast software to set up automated streams that make Twitch’s system treat them as though they’re livestreaming.
This, in turn, allows viewers to get credit toward a potential VALORANT beta drop. So effectively, those streamers are doing fans a service by setting up streams for when they’re offline, right?
Well, Summit1g, the most-watched VALORANT streamer on Twitch by a long shot, doesn’t see it that way. While those broadcasters farm viewers without actually livestreaming, Summit says other up-and-coming content creators who would otherwise get viewers are hurt.
“It’s extremely distasteful in my opinion to use this livestreaming service, and then completely ignore the rerun feature,” he said. “I could have done that on the 3rd when nobody even had that kind of stuff, and we still kept it live.”
Summit was one of the few content creators who had access to VALORANT content before most other streamers. When the game’s beta originally released, he was one of just a few content creators who people could earn drops from.
“It’s a livestreaming platform, you know,” he said. “No one is hurting on drops because you’re gone for a night. In fact, all you’re doing is hurting every single person in the section below you. Instead of for eight hours a day, which is completely fine, 12 hours a day, 15 hours a day, as long as you’re there, I understand because I do it too. I fucking grind the shit out of it because I know what it means to the channel.”
Summit is no slouch when it comes to producing live content, either. When he finds a game that he enjoys, he’s been known to put vast amounts of airtime into the game over a short period of time—and VALORANT has been no exception. Over the past seven days, Summit has streamed 111 hours.
Assuming that he’s slept about eight hours a day, which he probably hasn’t if he’s streaming that much, he’s spent nearly all of his waking hours this past week streaming VALORANT. Needless to say, if anyone is qualified to dish out some criticism to those who aren’t using Twitch as a platform to stream “live,” it’s Summit.
“I understand that it’s extremely crazy business moves right now going on, but fuck man,” he said. “At least do your job, it’s not a hard one.”
Summit ended his rant by calling it “craziness” that people are still broadcasting reruns as if they’re live. Initially, he said that he didn’t take too much of an issue with “live” reruns because there were only a few streamers that people could watch to even get drops.
But now that people can get a beta drop from anyone who’s live in the VALORANT section, the move doesn’t have much of a purpose for the general good of the game or its streaming ecosystem.
