Valorant has literally dominated Twitch since the release of its closed beta on April 7. The game sets audience records on the streaming platform, a feat that is due in particular to the key drops. By watching certain content creators play Valorant, viewers can obtain an access code to the game's beta.
This has obviously inflated the views of some streamers who have literally exploded their audience record. However, this phenomenon isn't eternal, and as the hype of the game fades, a slowdown is felt. At least that's what Twitch's statistics site, SullyGnome, reports.
Last week the category Just Chatting on Twitch surpassed the last Riot Games game in terms of viewing hours. This concept — allowing a streamer to chat quietly with his/her community — has been on the rise for several years. This isn't the only explanation for this figure.
This drop in audience is mainly due to the loss of some of the most popular content creators on Amazon's streaming platform. We can take as an example Jaryd "summit1g" Lazar and Timothy John "TimTheTatman" Betar who have experienced some of the best audience averages since the release of the Valorant beta.
Some people thought that the launch of the Competitive mode would signal the return of these streamers to the game but it seems that they prefer to wait for the official release scheduled for this summer before getting back into it. Don't worry though, the game still ranks as the second most watched game on the platform with 33.8 million hours of viewing last week, ahead of Fortnite and League of Legends.
The addition of content will certainly see some small audience increases, but we'll definitely have to wait until the game comes out of its beta version before we can really see what it will be worth over the long term on Twitch.