2021 was the first full year for competitive Valorant and we take a closer look at how things went, focusing on the highlights and achievements.
Riot certainly took its time to develop its own free-to-play first-person shooter game. VALORANT has now reached peak visibility, thanks to the recently concluded VALORANT Champions Tour 2021 where hundreds of teams from all over the world tried to qualify for the biggest event in the game’s calendar, Champions Berlin.
The final game played between Acend and Gambit Esports, saw a peak viewership record of around 1.09 million viewers across all languages and platforms.
Not bad for a game title that is less than 2 years old.
The growth of VALORANT
As a young’un in the multiplayer game scene, the growth of VALORANT is pretty outstanding. Based on data from activeplayer.io, as of December, there is an average of 13.2 million active monthly players, with an average of 883K daily players in the same month.
The peak was in July, where the game saw 14.9 million active monthly players and a peak of 1.02 million on 30 July of this year. These numbers alone are enough to cement it as one of the more popular games online – and the game is currently only available on PC. With the rumoured mobile version coming soon, we should see bigger growth in the numbers as we go into 2022.
As a comparison, these numbers are roughly double the numbers of Overwatch’s player base numbers in 2021.
VALORANT in different markets
While the game is a global game, some markets will have more players than others. According to playercounter.com, the top five countries currently playing VALORANT are:
- United States – 22.53%
- Brazil – 6.72%
- Turkey – 6.22%
- Philippines – 5.73%
- Indonesia – 4.00%
These numbers are based on active daily participation by players.
The Valorant Champions Tour
With the numbers shared above, it is no surprise that Riot Games have elected to create a year-long tournament circuit called the VALORANT Champions Tour. The competition saw hundreds of teams from all regions around the world play in the group stages to qualify to the two major stages of the competition – Masters and Champions.
There were a total of three Masters played. The first round of Masters was held online in specific regions, the second Masters was the game’s first LAN event held in Iceland – Masters Reykjavik and the final Masters was held in Germany – Masters Berlin. Over 300 teams played throughout the VCT period.
The top teams from all three Masters qualified to compete in the final major event in the tour, Champions Berlin held again in Germany.
The top 16 teams in the world competed at Champions. There, Acend won the first-ever Champions title, along with the world’s best VALORANT team title after knocking out Gambit Esports in a nail biting grand finale with a score of 3-2.
Champions Berlin broke all records as the final match between Acend and Gambit Esports saw a peak viewership of 1.089 million, beating the previous peak.
Throughout the VCT, the viewership of the tournament was pretty good for a year-one event, enhanced by the pandemic viewers who are looking for a new source of entertainment while they are stuck at home. Masters Reykjavik saw a peak viewership of 1.085 million while Masters Berlin saw a peak of 811k viewers. From here on, the numbers can only grow bigger as the 2022 season rolls around the corner
The future of the game
The question is - where can VALORANT move from here?
The introduction of the Game Changers series, a series of regional tournaments involving segments of women and other marginalised genders for a more inclusive gaming scene, is always a good thing to have for any game. The inclusion of the oft-forgotten segment is a step in the right direction for VALORANT to include all gamers, regardless of status or gender.
VALORANT is set to grow even more with the start of the new year and season, and we are looking forward to seeing what is in the pipeline for the game in the years to come.
