Highly anticipated: Riot Games' newest multiplayer shooter Valorant has not even released yet, but as of this writing, the game has attained 1.7 million concurrent viewers on Twitch. This count ties it with Fortnite's record for the largest gathering of users to a stream ever.
Valorant, previously codenamed "Project A," is a CS:GO style 5v5 shooter with an almost Overwatch look to it. The closed beta for the game launched today with several streamers coordinating with Riot to broadcast gameplay. The developer also gave some of the influencers beta invites to give away to viewers, so it is probably not too surprising that it attracted so many people wanting to not only get a glimpse of the gameplay but also have a chance to get in on it.
Fortnite's big haul was when Epic destroyed the map with a massive black hole to usher in Chapter Two of the game. More than 73 million unique viewers visited for that event, with the concurrent count peaking at 1.7 million. Valorant has also topped 1.7 million simultaneous spectators, but total unique viewer count is unknown at this time.
Comparisons between the two streams may not be entirely fair since Fortnite's was purely organic with people coming in just because they were curious to see what was going on. At the same time, Valorant's broadcast is a coordinated effort to promote the game. It may also have been helped by the more significant number of people staying at home looking for things to do while they wait out the coronavirus.
Still, 1.7 million people all gathered at once to watch other people play a game is pretty staggering.
https://www.techspot.com/news/84734-valorant-tied-fortnite-most-concurrent-twitch-viewers-17.html
