VALORANT’s viewership blew away CS:GO, other FPS games on Twitch

Riot Games’ first-person shooter, VALORANT, was the most successful shooting game on the streaming platform Twitch this year, according to data accumulated by Stream Charts. 

The tactical FPS boasted a massive 1.126 billion total hours watched from the start of January to Dec. 18. This figure is almost double the second-place shooting game Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, developed by Valve. The title had almost 685 million total hours watched. 

CS:GO had the highest peak viewership of all shooting games with 1.6 million viewers, however. Epic Games’ staple shooter, Fortnite, finished with the second-highest peak viewership, edging out VALORANT. 

Both CS:GO and VALORANT boast two of the most popular streamers on Twitch with Brazilian streamer Gaules steaming ahead with over 126 million total hours watched. Former CS:GO professional player and current VALORANT content creator Tarık Celik is in second place with 69 million total hours watched. 

While content creators such as Tarik streamed his ranked matches to their audience, he would also engage with the competitive VCT circuit and co-stream the tournament scattered throughout the year, which bolstered the overall viewership. 

VALORANT has continued to pick up steam since its release two years ago, with the content creation considered to be lucrative compared to other shooting titles. Competitively, VALORANT has yet to take down one of the most popular esports of all time, CS:GO, in terms of peak viewership. 

VALORANT will be back next year for the VCT 2023 season alongside the new content introduced by Riot.