The Valorant beta start time has only just arrived, but fans are already flocking in their millions to get a first look at Riot’s upcoming shooter. That’s right – millions. Head to game streaming platform Twitch right now and you’ll find there’s just under 1.6 million users checking out gameplay of the FPS game’s closed beta.
The number of Valorant closed beta viewers as of this story is 1,591,468, which is enormous, and makes it the most-viewed game on the platform at this time by a long, long way. Closest behind it is Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, with just under 220k viewers. Considering Valve’s shooter’s seeing a lot of attention at the moment, with the CSGO player count record having just been smashed this past weekend, Valorant’s Twitch viewership is astonishing.
This figure has grown rapidly over the course of a few hours, too. Earlier this afternoon, video games market analyst Daniel Ahmad posted a screenshot on Twitter showing there were around 1.3 million viewers less than an hour following the beta’s launch.
It’s possible these numbers are, at least in part, explained by some “server issues” the game’s currently experiencing. Riot has announced on Twitter it’s “temporarily paused dropping Closed Beta access” while it triages these hiccups. With some players not able to jump into the beta themselves, it’s likely many will be turning to Twitch footage to see the game instead.
Time will tell whether the continues to draw big numbers on the platform as the Valorant closed beta continues and the game approaches launch, which is due to arrive sometime later this year.
The @PlayVALORANT closed beta went live less than an hour ago and has already reached 1.3m+ viewers on Twitch. pic.twitter.com/uwtkA039wv
— Daniel Ahmad (@ZhugeEX) April 7, 2020
If you’re keen to get a look for yourself, you can watch Valorant closed beta gameplay on Twitch here.
We also have a Valorant gameplay preview if you’re keen to get an idea of what the multiplayer game’s like to dive into ahead of its full release this year.