TimTheTatman hopped into the VALORANT section on Twitch today for the first time in a little while, and almost immediately, he noticed that something was up. There are an awful lot of tournaments going on.
Following record levels of success on Twitch during its closed beta, influencer-driven viewership for Riot Games’ new tactical shooter has seen a severe decline as top Twitch personalities have strayed away from the game.
But due to VALORANT’s similarities to other established esports like CS:GO and Overwatch, the game has quickly drawn attention from teams and organizers looking to turn it into the next top-tier esport.
With numerous competitions going on in the title already, Tim couldn’t help but feel a little bit dejected by what that could mean for the game’s viability for people who might want to play the game to generate personality-driven content.
“Are there already ‘Tournament Terry’s,” he said. “Is this going to turn into the Counter-Strike section? Aw, man. You know what I’m talking about, dude? Sometimes they’ll just have tournaments all day every day. God, I hope VALORANT doesn’t go down that path man.”
CS:GO is one of the most established and popular esports in the history of gaming. But on Twitch, the game isn’t known for having an abundance of personality streamers. One of the theories for that lack of content creators is tied to the high volume of esports activity in the game.
Because there are so many esports events happening all the time, content creators have a difficult time maintaining an audience due to the interest fans have in watching competitions.
The existence of an esports scene for a game isn’t inherently bad. In fact, it tends to do more good than it does harm. But it can also hurt content creators if the frequency of tournaments is too high.
While top streamers like TimTheTatman and Summit1g moved away from VALORANT prior to this game’s influx of team investments and tournament organization, there’s a chance that its esports scene could prevent them from making any sort of impactful long-term return to streaming the title.
