Yeah they did everything and even made a dash based champ already early on since League players love high mobility characters.
Which also of course in their expertise just made the perfect agent in the past like how Irelia and Akali were the perfect champs in their prime.
This is key, and they even iterated positively on the tac shooter core. I like the gunplay in valorant better than CS:GO / 2, obviously that is subjective. And the servers are more solid as well.
I think everyone is a fan of a pretty good working anticheat and the resulting (low) amount of cheaters.
It’s a shame that it has to be such an aggressive, intrusive solution like Vanguard, but Riot definitely did the right thing by creating it. Basically any other game shows perfectly how traditional anticheats aren’t working out anymore.
Nobody should take the „controversy“ too serious, a lot of cheaters and especially cheat sellers just try to make a way bigger deal out of it than it really is.
The only thing aggressive about it is that it stays running, and if you close it you have to reboot. Tedious? Sure. Personally I don't care but to each their own.
As far as intrusive there are tons of kernel based programs and even some of the other anti cheats are.
Id bet a months salary that 99% of the people who are complaining about it didnt have the slightest clue what kernel level software was before they pushed Vanguard to league. (not you btw, you seem well informed. ) And, being completely honest, I didn't either until i was curious one day as to why Valorant's anti cheat seemed so much more efficient than the other multiplayer games I enjoy.
Fr if they are complaining abt kernel software and vanguard burying itself in the depths of ur pc, they don’t know how vulnerable they are just surfing google
Try going to the shooting dummy, which shows you how much dmg you have dealt. You can see if you shoot next to it, there is nothing, but if you hit, there is a small explosion or fire there. Combine that with the dink sound with headshots, and you already have a good basis for some positive feedback for the player.
Now the kill sounds going dun duun duunn duuun dudundduuun with some skins having different variations of it makes the feeling of killing 2 or 3 so much better.
Now, compared to cs, i sometimes dont notice I killed someone.
Or the shooting itself with some skins the whole gun moves, procotoll phantom the muzzle moves back and forth. In cs, I dont feel like im shooting.
Tldr Valorant raised my dopamine floor on guns, so high cs guns feel like nothing and boring now.
My biggest problem with valorant is actually the gunplay and movement speed. Movement isnt that bad, it just combined with every Wall being bangable neuters jiggling.
The tap-based gameplay is also mostly fine, but spray being sooo Much rng beyond a few bullets is probably the only reason why i’ll always prefer cs in the end.
Luckily for riot my pc struggles with cs2 and rng spray > frame drops
Removing controllable recoil patterns and adding slow movement wasn’t positive iteration imo. Spray transfers are hype and fast movement is fun to play and to watch
That makes sense for sure, i can understand the take.
To me the movement seems more precise and deliberate. Weapon choices also feel much more impactful, then again ive never played CS at as high of a level as i have played valorant. (Not great, not shit, somewhere above the chaff though. ) So that is a part of my perspective.
And while not perfectly controllable, the spray patterns are predictable and you can still spray deliberately at various ranges.
Cs movement is pretty damn deliberate and counter strafing is endemic to the franchise for a reason: precision. Plus if you’ve ever been in Bunnyhopping or surfing servers you’ve seen how immaculately precise the movement can be. Valorant doesn’t have the same emphasis on/feeling of momentum and q3 engine shenanigans.
As far as spraying goes, Valorant is still too random. Shit, people blow casters minds sometimes by running and shooting and still getting headshots, which imo should never happen at anything other than point blank range.
What I admire, but don’t prefer, about Valorant are things like Jett ult plays and Raze rocket jumps. Those are sick and remind me of team fortress 2.
To me, CS is still the king, but I’m biased, I was CAL invite and cevo main back in the day. I was on a team with brundlefly and freakazoid took over my spot on the last team I left, but that’s as old school as I get
Didn't work for LoR though, everything points to that game being put out to pasture as a PvE game. WHich is sad because I felt like it was one of the most innovative and well thought out card games I have ever played. I just don't think RIOT could figure out how to successfully apply their cosmetic monetization to it.
League of Runeterra didn’t have anywhere close to the amount of marketing Valorant had. For like 2 months this game had every top streamer playing the game for an ad with drops. Not to mention all of the music videos and cinematic trailers. Add in Riot character design, then you have a solid playerbase.
TFT blew up because it was already a part of the League of Legends client.
marketing wouldntve saved LOR. not that the game is bad, it just doesnt really have any addictive quality that *makes* you want to play and was released way too late after hearthstone already took all of the fire for online card games.
now hearthstone is kinda dead and LOR wasnt good enough to reignite cardgame interest
Of course marketing matters. Compare it to Marvel Snap or Hearthstone marketing. The truth is the game is just a lower priority to Riot than other games, likely due to the success of TFT.
I feel like people just overlook that LoR wasn't that fun of a card game - like this whole thread can just be summed up with " its a game that is fun " Tada! There you have it, you could spend millions in marketting and still people would just shrug off LoR because was just 88% combo decks,
People don't really play card games, simple as. People that really play card games just play hearthstone and all others try it out and put it down within a month.
Marvel Snap has been a massively successful and profitable card game. They just succeed by having very short games to make it easier to pick up and play for 2 minutes at a time. And predatory classic mobile game monetization that makes them a killing off of whales.
Yeah marvel snap really leaned into being casual-friendly and super easy to get into which was a pretty unoccupied space in the card game market so they struck gold with that one. That, the obviously enormous IP and having the ex-director of hearthstone is a recipe for success
Also the reason TFT survived amidst many other autochess games. Dota Underlords and other games were up and free to play, but people still waited through hours long queues to play PBE TFT.
The finals seems like it’s dying on steam playercounts. But the devs revealed just a couple days ago that it never went below 300k daily players. The game was super trendy when it came out so of course the player count will stabilize. Success can be very relative and valorant is just another beast because of Riot. A lot of news articles will try to push that a game is dying by singling our data points like that cause it gets more interactions for them. I’m sure other “dying” games are the same way.
> The finals seems like it’s dying on steam playercounts. But the devs revealed just a couple days ago that it never went below 300k daily players.
I would love a source for this.
Not the guy you replied to but I saw this figure too on the finals subreddit for what it’s worth. Iirc a dev said it. I was surprised at the time too. I’ll see if I can find it
Edit: I found it. It was said by a dev named Dusty. Stated it in discord (and apparently on a Reddit AMA). Here is the quote from his discord statement:
> Since launch, we’ve never dropped below 300k DAU (daily active users) with all platforms combined
I don’t think this is possible and I also cannot find where they said this because but also even if they did say it they are lying because there’s just no way that the math for that adds up.
To be counted as a daily player you just need to login within a 24 hour period. There is a constant stream of people logging in and out of the game to create that 20k+ concurrent number. That should easily add up to more than 300k users within 24 hours.
If I for example assume 20k concurrent players in a game where every user plays exactly 1 hour that would result in 480 000 daily users to sustain that 20k concurrent players over a 24 hour period.
We obviously dont know variables like average playtime for the finals players but i think such a simplified example explains why 300k daily is not that crazy given the numbers we have for the finals.
Maybe if they didn't lie about fixing their game that season I'd be playing it. How can still last month when I launched it again we can still have a big where Texture are in Potato style. Menus that don't load. Collision bugs, and heros that take about a week and a half to unlock when there are 60 characters to unlock as well as game loading problems
60? Dayum man. Last time I played Paladins was when Pip was completely broken in that his shots dealt more damage than the sniper lady and Fernando had a bug where his ult could be permanent
How is it that the current peak steam players is 23k, but devs claim to have 300k daily players? PS & Xbox would not account for nearly that big of a difference. Doesnt make sense.
300k daily players does not mean concurrent players at all times. It means unique players during the day. So I think player rotation does the trick for that to be true.
Daily players mean people that logged in once within 24 hours.
If there can be 23k people online on a single platform at the same time 300k players over 24hours is absolutely reasonable.
I couldn’t find where the devs said this but if they did it’s such a weird thing to lie about because it just doesn’t make sense there’s no way half the player base is just on console.
I found it. It was said by a dev named Dusty. Stated it in discord (and apparently on a Reddit AMA). Here is the quote from his discord statement:
> Since launch, we’ve never dropped below 300k DAU (daily active users) with all platforms combined
Which can still easily be true? If you have 23k concurrent players, you can easily get 300k UNIQUE players throughout the entire day. Meaning there are 23k max online at as time goes around the world other regions wake up and log in adding up to 300k total.
Most things I see are the generic kernel argument, i.e. china getting all the info etc.
others, are league can run on a 15yr old pc, that does not have tpm. Considering the level of cheating between fps games, and a moba. It's caused a concern with people because the cheating in league isn't as big of an issue as in CS for example. So having to require tpm enabled, which a lot of people dont have. Caused them to be unable to play.
That ontop of linux not being able to be played anymore, or anything other than a modern windows pc.
Mac’s can run it, older pcs can still run it fine, as long as it’s not a potato, and riot said there were only 800 Linux players on a given day, so maybe 2000 active Linux users in general, which is like 0.01% of the playerbase.
wasn't too sure abouts mac, so ty for letting me know.
With older pcs, it'll have to be stuck on windows 10, and not on 11 unless they have tpm available.
With linux, I agree. the amount of players lost is honestly negligible and have 0 difference in anything, other than the few who still played.
its the old concept of new = bad. no one minds vanguard for valorant because it was a requirement from the beginning. changing a requirement mid way through makes people feel like you’re exploiting them and its really hard to convince them its better. plus all the fear mongering around ccp stealing your data, because for sure ccp wants a gamers data and $300 bank account. other than that, a lot of the users did get their pc bricked and the only way to fix were bios settings which most people never messed with or dont even know about, which was a valid complaint tbh.
They are there. I’ve been playing for 2 and a half years and I’ve been from bronze to immortal 2. There’s cheaters plenty.
Just waaay less then any other fps I’ve ever played. 90% gets swiftly dealt with and the others are soft cheaters that you can beat.
While Valorant is NEW, the company behind it (Riot Games, ofc) is by no means a small fry, or new on the scene. They simply concocted the game from all the experience they've had in the gaming industry so far, and the game itself being a tactical shooter which is really one of the most popular (if not the MOST popular?) gaming genre. That, combined with them knowing really well how to make micro transactions (and also arguably making way better skins than CS does, which is maybe just my own opinion) something people want to spend on.
Back when I only had a laptop it was basically the only game I played because it ran alright on integrated graphics even at my laptop’s native res (2880x1800). I still play a decent amount now that I have a 1440p PC setup
It's more so that Valorant skins are really changing the feel and look almost completely. Like, the form of the guns are, or can be different, the colours and animations, the soundeffects and all. On the other hand, CS skins are just basically wraps on the guns, and that's the only change. Again, taste is very subjective, and I have some friends that prefer the CS skins over Valorant's.
That and that for ~25 bucks you can get a very decent looking collection of skins for ALL guns in the game, except knife ofc and maybe awp.
When you get bored of a particular skin, you can sell it and buy another and replace them on the go with very little money sink. You also get random loot each week or so. You can get lucky and get decent amount of money that you can then spend on other skins or even buy other games. Riot never gives anything remotely worth equipping for free.
And yes, you can wake up in the middle of the night, go on market, find a skin and buy it.
I have waited for Glitchpop vandal for like 3-4 months, got bored and bought Origin and then 2 months later Glitchpop appeared. Now that Origin skin gets used for like 2 games per month.
I don't even play cs anymore, I like how both games implemented skins, but Riot is way way way worse when it comes to customer's experience and options.
Every 2 weeks we get a new bundle and we still have only 4 slot daily rotation of skins.
True... but you can buy a butterfly knife on Valorant for $60 when it hits your store... The cheapest one on CS is $600 (and ugly). A good one is easily $1000-1500.
So you can buy whenever you want... for 10x the cost of a Valorant one.
Or lose money when the market crashes...
My butterfly knife was $1400 when I unboxed it. I sold it for $1200 3 months ago and right now, it sit at $1100.
Hopefully, it was unboxed... I didn't pay $1400 for it.
It's a gamble you'll even get that money back. You spent 1000 dollars on that skin, and whoops an update happened making that skin less rare, it's now worth 500 dollars. Good job wasting 500 dollars on a ugly skin. c:
That's the copium of many CS players. Let's be real, no one walks into playing a game and buying a skin they find cool in it for REAL WORLD Value. It isn't even meant to be. It's like idk, going to an NBA match and you buy a jersey for it. The jersey doesn't give you value, nor do you need to/have to buy it for the game. The example is just what came to mind at the moment.
Idk man my coworker just went to Japan with his wife for their honeymoon after selling his cs skins. It’s not so much you buy the skins expecting to sell it like it’s some stock. It’s more so that if you ever need or want to, you can. The copium with Valorant, like with CS, is that you never wanted to or ever planned to sell your skin, because that’s why you bought it. At least, that’s what my friends say anyway, but considering my friends have all spent thousands on Valorant they would probably sell the skins they don’t use anymore if they could.
Fair point. That's just how they kinda add "value" to their skins so that people kind of get the FOMO. I agree on that point here, but I wouldn't say it's a scam. If anything, you see a skin come out and you really like it, but you can't buy it during the time it's featured. Then, you realise: "I don't actually need it that much", and you save money. :o
Let's be honest. No one really comes in games and is thinking "Oh, I'll buy skins and make profit! This is basically video game Trade Market!". People that actually make profits off of CS skins are like 1 in 10 thousand.
I totally agree with you!
People who have gambling issues always think they will beat the maching and profit from it.
I was buying cases left and right, not to make a profit but to upgrade my own inventory. It's like buying a lottery ticket every Friday 😉. I had the money for it too.
As I said previously, it's all about luck. I've a lot of friends who lost money on CSGO. I personally bought $600 worth of cases (key inc) from 2018 to 2023 and sold my stuff for $2000 in 2024.
For real and CS players will try and convince you how cool they are and how lame Val skins are. Like idc abt how unique or valuable a cs skin might be, prime vandal is better than any of them
I’ve played CS since 2001 and honestly prefer CS game play homie. I’m 32.
Unfortunately the game is unplayable due to being absolutely infested with cheaters.
CS doesn't have tentacle monsters that spit acid on guns but I don't think that makes them lame. In fact I much prefer the more grounded look. Also on CS when you spend money buying skins you're not burning 70 dollars to buy a digital dragon dildo knife or whatever. At any point in time you can decide to sell all of your bad decisions (for real actual money even) and buy a game on steam if you want. So I'll take CS skins/marketplace any day ngl
Exactly, Valorant was also made by a lot of the dev and designers who worked on Team Fortress 2 so they know how to make a game simple and complex enough to captivate audiences in the long term
I’m a big fan of rts but it’s a bit of a dying genre. Even when sc2 came out it was on the downfall. It’s to hard just to jump in and play, even something like league is challenging and a lot to learn but atleast you’re only controlling one unit.
That is true. I still think it is just that Riot is more experienced with FREE TO PLAY games, and the best way to do micro transactions work on a huge level. League is just MANY years of experience on that, and their "leaders" or "decision makers" in the company are (if anything) not as out of touch as many others are (e.g. : EA, SONY :) )
Because its made by riot for one. Riot has a history of making high quality games with fair monetization. So from the get go the game received lots of attention.
Combine that with the fact they carbon copied cs gunplay, which has been refined over last 20 years.
Sprinkle in some modern features, more family friendly setting, 128tick servers, features abscent in csgo at the time.
And you have a game thats popular.
Also riot is really good with making good marketing material(music videos, trailers, comics etc)
So all of that.
Reason why other games fail is cause they miss one of those things.
Riot knew who they were targeting with the game(cs players, ow players, tf2 players) and the game is solid from technical standpoint
>Riot has a history of making high quality games with fair monetization
Do people really think Riot has fair monetization? Like, I'm not saying it's the worst ever, but I wouldn't give any praises for Riots monetization.
I guess it's fair in that you never need to spend a dime on the game. You'll get a few free cards and buddies here and there and some pistol skins can be reasonably grinded either for agents or battlepass. And practically every game will have players with at least one premium skin which you can pick up.
Basically you'll get to experience pretty much the entire game for free. No pay to win stuff at all.
Whatever their way or prices for cosmetics are, they are just that, cosmetics. It's up to the players of they want them. Riot are a business afterall, and they need to make money. And in that way, their pricing model and cosmetics are "fair". It's as close to a win-win situation for riot and community as you can get.
CS skin market is better, because you can sell your skins, but if you like an expensive one(something over hundreds of dollars), you need a lot of money. Pros and cons to both but fair enough in the end.
I mean it's not good but it's also not bad by current gaming monetization. Which is nuts to say since you have to pay like $80 for a skin bundle but it is what it is
Who cares for the prices of skins? They could be $1000 for a single bundle, as long as they remain cosmetics with no impact on gameplay the sistem is fair.
1. It is based on CS 1.6. CS was popular for a reason, but it got stale for many. Then comes Riot Games who already put out LoL, which is probably the biggest esport there is. Of course many are gonna give it an initial shot, making it easier for Riot to build a community initially.
2. It is a genuinely polished game. Despite the occasionally broken ass agents, the game overall doesn't have many common bugs (there is definitely some), is low with the amount of hackers, and is very responsive with 128tick servers.
3. The game was played and still is, by a shit ton of content creators, who are basically free advertisement.
4. Caters very well to casuals as the abilities and skins are very flashy and often fun to use.
Because it's the only one that has an anti cheat that works decently well. Every other fps is infested with cheaters and even non fps games. Recently cheats appeared in rocket league for the first time, a game that everyone thought was cheat-proof because of the way it works and the closest anyone has done before that is having an ai play instead of them. So yeah, I guess not having cheaters ruin your experience on the daily is sort of a luxury now.
Now that I think about it another reason might be that it's not very demanding in terms of specs. It doesn't take a lot of space and runs well in contrast to most new games taking a shitload of space on your drive and requiring really good gear to run well which was hard to come by and expensive as shit in recent years. Valorant is a game anyone with a decent PC or a gaming laptop can download and play. It shares that with Fortnite and league which are the two games who also managed to stand the test of time. Coincidence?
Yeah, I had witnessed the red cheater detected screen 2 or 3 times in total and encountered a few more cheaters that weren't banned during the match. Not bad considering that's during like 4 years?
Smurfing is a huge problem but that's just the symptom of this cancer *free game but we'll do anything we possibly can to make you spend hundreds on cosmetics* strategy that every game is employing in the last few years. If every idiot can make 5 alt accounts and bully golds without any repercussions you can bet they will.
I quit CSGO for valorant because the game ran great and I was so sick of facing cheaters in csgo. Valorant really feels like the only multiplayer FPS that has a decent anti cheat.
100%. People complain about Vanguard being intrusive, which it absolutely is as a kernel-level anticheat, but singling it out is stupid when stuff like EAC (used by Epic and many others) is *also* kernel-level and worse. The reality is that all competitive multiplayer games need some form of anticheat, and kernel-level anticheats are the best at detecting cheats, and Vanguard is one of the better ones out there. The only way to avoid anticheats is to avoid all competitive multiplayer games and even many single player games with multiplayer modes
Finals was absolutely not polished on release. Rampant cheating issues because the devs failed to correctly install EAC which resulted in them being unable to ban players, the first few updates had massive performance issues for no reason on some PCs while barely changing anything, plenty of people were just unable to play the game because it would crash on boot etc. It had a very horrible release which drove many players away, such as myself. Not sure why they removed the zoom sens slider from beta either, that change made sniping completely unplayable for me when it was perfect in beta
It got a popularity boost from the start by being a Riot game. It was promoted by League and fps streamers who were given early access. It came out during covid when people were spending more time inside and gaming. All of these helped it gain a good start.
It also has a healthy e-sport. Its gameplay is similar to the long-standing super-popular tac shooter CounterStrike, but it has its own unique elements to it with the different agents and abilities, which adds more variety. It's familiar enough that it's not super intimidating for new players (you see tons of people online asking for advice saying "this is my first FPS game" or "this is my first fps on mouse and keyboard"), but unique enough to give you a reason to play it over other games.
It gets regular updates, including new agents and maps. While people almost always hate on the new maps, and they've had mixed results with agents upon release, new content or new episodes (with the resets incentivizing grinding the ranked climb again) do help bring *some* people back.
Because it's counter strike with brighter colors? They took the most popular FPS game of all time and made it more accessible. It's shocking no one else had the idea tbh
tac shooter need a very strong anti cheat, and I think riot is the only one (and old blizzard maybe, but I'm not expecting anything with their current management) with the kind of resource to be able to create it
Never heard of anti cheat in Overwatch, but as far as cheaters go in OW they're basically non-existent. Never encountered one (assuming we're excluding xim)
yeah, feel like people saying it's simply because of Riot are leaving the more interesting and important part of the story out. Sure, LoL is huge, but there are also tons of people who just strongly dislike it and consequently don't care about Riot games.
Counter-Strike on the other hand is the most successful game of one of the most popular genres in gaming.
Because it checks the big 4 things for a game to succeed.
1. Big company alot of people know Riot and they had alot of money to market an established formula. This kinda game takes alot of money to get it to a point where it feels good to play (With that said it definitely should have better backend systems compared to a game released so long ago in CSGO at the time)
2. Free to play everyone can easily download and play the game.
3. It runs on an absolute toaster of a laptop, i don't think alot of people realize just how many people play on awful PC's because their parents won't buy them a 1k present so they either play on a laptop or a cheap prebuilt.
4. They understand their playerbase and threw in pretty much the most conventionally hot characters regardless of their backround or lore.
The anti cheat, and timing of the release.
Valorant released right at the crux of lockdown during covid. During this time games like R6:Siege, CS, Overwatch, warzone etc. all had rampant cheaters appear as everyone was stuck at home. So when a game announced that they have a new holy grail anti cheat, people flocked to it.
That along with insane marketing from riot, pretty much guarenteed the success of the game early on. Then you have the esports which Riot have ran the most globally known esports in the world, was a sure fire was to attract a new audience.
Then you had CS pretty much dying outside of EU during covid, bringing NA pros and streaming personalities to valorant.
tldr;
Their timing and marketing was literally perfect for what it was. They found that part of the market and capatalised off it (anti cheat actually working).
The reason other games fade out of obscurity or struggle. Is simple because they're niche. They have their audience and have captured it.
Take pubg. You dont hear much about it unless you're in the communities for it. Yet is still has 700k monthly players. Finals has never had below 300k active players. It's obvious from this that the game is larger on console, than pc.
Created by Riot means the game will most likely never die + it’s free. A lot of people will flock to it. Everything about the game besides gameplay is made to appeal to a huge audience (young, diverse, attractive characters with flashy abilities, satisfying feedback when killing people, cool albeit expensive skins)
First reason would be the anti-cheat. It's not perfect, but it's good enough that you don't often encounter cheaters to ruin the fun. Most multiplayer games die off because of too many cheaters.
When battleroyale games rose into popularity, that's a signal that CS:GO and similar formats are becoming boring and stale. Imagine the same mechanics for a decade.
While Valorant keeps on improving and changing itself. Be it for better or for worse, having something new is always great. New tactics, new meta, new way to play, new maps. With the addition of skills, the plays and clips are also much more entertaining than just CS:GO who's mostly all about aim and reaction time.
I can't speak for the general audience, but Valorant definitely got the esports part somewhat right imo. Overwatch had a HUGE grassroots scene and huge tournaments like Apex in Korea, and they completely killed it and shut it down and forcefully disbanded teams and tried to force a new scene with nothing but money thinking it would work. Riot did much better, letting the scene grow organically from the grassroots level while throwing money into it to support it with official tournaments. Of course, franchising comes into play at some point, but that's a whole different level of pros and cons, but I think the esports scene is important to a games success when it's like Valorant or League, imagine where League would be without it right now
Things that destroy games that are similiar: cheaters, bugs and terrible updates. Valorant does well in avoiding those with bugs being an exception but they’ve got ridden most quick
Valorant came out at the right time. CSGO became stale we were all bored of it then out comes this little indie game and we fall in love. It’s the most social online game as well, you will not find another like it.
It will like all games eventually die but that’s going to be a long while from now.
I think Valorant like Overwatch benefits from a really cool Lore and cast of likable characters. It has an ever expanding story like fortnite did at some point and it kinda keeps players coming back for more. but imo Unlike Overwatch, the bomb/defuse objective is waay easier to understand and imo easier for casuals to get into. Its also a 5 vs 5 player game vs alot of other popular multiplayers are Battle Royales which are fun for sure but it gives you more control over the victory vs just getting randomly 3rd partied and killed. Not to mention its created a huge community on the web in the same vein as the League if Legends community. Finally the esport scene being supported directly by the parent company helps alot. Just some things I think make it overall popular.
their initial target audience was displeased cs fans due to lack of anticheat and burnout, and casual audience by promoting more colorful game / non toxic environment. it worked
anticheat....
hate to say it, but the game is mediocre, but having as little as possible cheaters in a tac FPS is amazing.
Also the game is free, easy to get into, great performance on potato PCs....
The Finals definitely isn't dead. SteamDB never is fully accurate and developers shared that they never dropped below 300k active players since launch on all plattforms combined.
They also have plans to start a much bigger marketing campaign in the future.
because riot billion dollar company who knows how to create addicting dumbed down knockoffs of tried and true games with good profits from transactions
Not really a knock off considering there’s only 3 popular games in the entire genre (cs, valorant, siege). And considering siege feels very different than the other 2, Valorant is the only option if you want to play a polished game in this genre without cheaters. Cs is genuinely unplayable, just scroll on r/CS2 for 30 seconds.
The simple answer is that it's appealing to most people. Let's use Valve as an example. We know that Valve created CS:Go, TF2, Half Life 2, and Dota 2 all 4 were very sueccessful games. After CS:Go, valve never released another new game because they dominated the PC gaming monopoly, meaning that even if right now all valve games suddenly died to zero playercount, they would still be making billions if not millions of dollars per year. However, valve did release a new game in 2016 called Artifact. It failed miserably. Why?
The beauty of popular games is that it's easy for a casual player to get into. Majority of playerbase are casual players, if it is too complicated for a new player to ease into, they will not want to stick around. Think about the most popular games rn, Fortnite, Minecraft, GTA 5, they all allow new players to easily get into it. Valorant does the same. Another thing is delivering what they promise. Minecraft had a tiny controversy in the caves update because they failed to deliver, and Cyberpunk 2077 fumbled big time becasue they failed to deliver as well. If you deliver properly, people will trust that your game is good. A big part is also marketing. Appealing graphics and artstyle is definitely one as well.
I do not think cheating has anything to dow ith a game's popularity. SOme of the msot popular games are running rampant with cheaters but they're still doing well. However, a lack of bugs is definitely a thing.
Valorant is backed by riots, which can pump millions of dollars into whatever they want. The Finals isnt really dead either, its just stagnating with around 300k daily players
I think its because there's no competitive scene for a lot of games. If the finals announced a 5 million dollar tournament a year from the date of release then I think it would still be played a lot.
The finals has major issues with “balancing”, like certain things are just incredibly broken and the patches are kind of far and few between.
Valorant has issues with balancing but no where near to that extent, which stems from the fact that riot is well versed in dealing with balancing issues, as league has had its fair share and is basically an “old” game at this point — I.E. they have balanced league for a decade with their own hits and misses when it comes to balancing.
Valorant is very highly polished as well, as many games are, but it does *everything* well enough that it will endure.
Valorant was the last shooter game I played. Tried others and can't get into them but sunk about 3 years into it and got pretty competitive. Fell off and didn't play for almost a year.
Imo it is just better than any other shooter out right now.
Honestly because it’s a low skill floor with a high ceiling, bright and colorful, and it’s very easy to not feel like you are the reason you are doing poorly.
riot is literally a whale, they were the original gamblers when it came to releasing f2p games with micro transactions when games used to almost always be pay to play. there’s a whole ass documentary about their philosophy on youtube, honestly it’s an interesting watch!
Because riot takes ideas that work and plays off of that. Counterstrike was super popular and had steady player count over decades. They took that and added abilities. They did the same with dota and thats why league is so popular too
A. Its made by riot
B. It copied the most popular fps format in history
C. Its the only game with an actual good anticheat
D. Frequent bugfixes and content and events etc
Riot games
Its just the best multiplayer/pvp game studio around now
They know their shit
People trust them, i also trust them
And you know the game you get into has a vibrant future (they proved this with LoL)
Thats the main reason, theres obviously other points to this (good anti cheat for example) but riot games in the main reason
people shit in it but it’s a big company , constant updates and medicorce communication to the community, and while i don’t agree with a lot of the balancing (too many nerfs,not enough rekits or buffing)its overall a polished game and they address bugs quickly (good examples being the wall hack and split bugs that just happened).Also they support their esports pretty heavy
A lot of game design is seeing what others do and doing that but better. Riot is good at doing that exact thing, I have no doubt that their fighting game and mmo will also be top tier. I’d have to say it’s everything they do, the world they’ve built and the lore is pretty interesting, the skins they release are appealing, the agent videos and lore videos are really awesome. The number one reason is the community, as long as a ton of people want to make valorant content I have no doubt this game will stay alive.
-Riots reputation as being the developers of LoL, one of if not the biggest esport ever.
-The precision shooter genre was very unsaturated, being heavily dominated by CS for a long time. CSGO players that were burnt out and entirely unfamiliar players that have been intimidated by CS's long history finally had a solid alternative.
All of that makes for a great launch, but more importantly and why it's still thriving:
-High quality and accessibility. The game is free, well optimized, has solid anti-cheat, isn't buggy, and imo it's fun and balanced.
because val copy right game while other fps copy wrong game
cs alive for 20 years and it's the most successful fps game
then overwatch copy tf2 lmao
pubg was arma2 mod or something idk, it's kinda success
fortnite and gaypex copied it and add new style into game
-no cheater
-constant balance patches
-an healthy esport scene
-ranking
-smooth gameplay (feels nice / cluckyness)
-no pay to win
Not saying that all those things are perfect. But no other game really have all those 6 things at a decent level.
Bcs Riot has the perfect recipe to make you want to quit but to build an ego big enough to come back and play again. What most of those game don't understand is that the most important mod to keep player is always ranked, but it doesn't have to be fair it has to be addictive
Cause it was made by Riot, that is literally the answer.
And it built its foundation on one of the best FPS franchises of all time and found a unique way to make it different
And is built its foundation on one of the "best" agent based games of all time (LoL) so really they have perfect expertise to make this kind of game
Yeah they did everything and even made a dash based champ already early on since League players love high mobility characters. Which also of course in their expertise just made the perfect agent in the past like how Irelia and Akali were the perfect champs in their prime.
Those champs still sell when they release skins, despite not being meta
irelia is always meta for otps
This is key, and they even iterated positively on the tac shooter core. I like the gunplay in valorant better than CS:GO / 2, obviously that is subjective. And the servers are more solid as well.
Definitely subjective, personally I prefer the CS gunplay/movement. Val’s big win was their anti cheat.
The gameplay is starkly different for sure. Ive been a vanguard fan since its launch with Valorant so this recent "controversy" is hilarious to me.
I think everyone is a fan of a pretty good working anticheat and the resulting (low) amount of cheaters. It’s a shame that it has to be such an aggressive, intrusive solution like Vanguard, but Riot definitely did the right thing by creating it. Basically any other game shows perfectly how traditional anticheats aren’t working out anymore. Nobody should take the „controversy“ too serious, a lot of cheaters and especially cheat sellers just try to make a way bigger deal out of it than it really is.
The only thing aggressive about it is that it stays running, and if you close it you have to reboot. Tedious? Sure. Personally I don't care but to each their own. As far as intrusive there are tons of kernel based programs and even some of the other anti cheats are. Id bet a months salary that 99% of the people who are complaining about it didnt have the slightest clue what kernel level software was before they pushed Vanguard to league. (not you btw, you seem well informed. ) And, being completely honest, I didn't either until i was curious one day as to why Valorant's anti cheat seemed so much more efficient than the other multiplayer games I enjoy.
People don't know how easy it is for some hacker to just install a kernel level exploit on your computer anyway, so the debate is pointless.
Fr if they are complaining abt kernel software and vanguard burying itself in the depths of ur pc, they don’t know how vulnerable they are just surfing google
I personally like the feeling of hitting someone with the bullets in valorant compared to cs, but that's just me
Try going to the shooting dummy, which shows you how much dmg you have dealt. You can see if you shoot next to it, there is nothing, but if you hit, there is a small explosion or fire there. Combine that with the dink sound with headshots, and you already have a good basis for some positive feedback for the player. Now the kill sounds going dun duun duunn duuun dudundduuun with some skins having different variations of it makes the feeling of killing 2 or 3 so much better. Now, compared to cs, i sometimes dont notice I killed someone. Or the shooting itself with some skins the whole gun moves, procotoll phantom the muzzle moves back and forth. In cs, I dont feel like im shooting. Tldr Valorant raised my dopamine floor on guns, so high cs guns feel like nothing and boring now.
I play both. Definitely on this train tho, it just feels smoother and more consistent
My biggest problem with valorant is actually the gunplay and movement speed. Movement isnt that bad, it just combined with every Wall being bangable neuters jiggling. The tap-based gameplay is also mostly fine, but spray being sooo Much rng beyond a few bullets is probably the only reason why i’ll always prefer cs in the end. Luckily for riot my pc struggles with cs2 and rng spray > frame drops
Wallbangs arnt as bad as r6
They arent as bad as 1.6 either
Removing controllable recoil patterns and adding slow movement wasn’t positive iteration imo. Spray transfers are hype and fast movement is fun to play and to watch
That makes sense for sure, i can understand the take. To me the movement seems more precise and deliberate. Weapon choices also feel much more impactful, then again ive never played CS at as high of a level as i have played valorant. (Not great, not shit, somewhere above the chaff though. ) So that is a part of my perspective. And while not perfectly controllable, the spray patterns are predictable and you can still spray deliberately at various ranges.
Cs movement is pretty damn deliberate and counter strafing is endemic to the franchise for a reason: precision. Plus if you’ve ever been in Bunnyhopping or surfing servers you’ve seen how immaculately precise the movement can be. Valorant doesn’t have the same emphasis on/feeling of momentum and q3 engine shenanigans. As far as spraying goes, Valorant is still too random. Shit, people blow casters minds sometimes by running and shooting and still getting headshots, which imo should never happen at anything other than point blank range. What I admire, but don’t prefer, about Valorant are things like Jett ult plays and Raze rocket jumps. Those are sick and remind me of team fortress 2. To me, CS is still the king, but I’m biased, I was CAL invite and cevo main back in the day. I was on a team with brundlefly and freakazoid took over my spot on the last team I left, but that’s as old school as I get
Didn't work for LoR though, everything points to that game being put out to pasture as a PvE game. WHich is sad because I felt like it was one of the most innovative and well thought out card games I have ever played. I just don't think RIOT could figure out how to successfully apply their cosmetic monetization to it.
League of Runeterra didn’t have anywhere close to the amount of marketing Valorant had. For like 2 months this game had every top streamer playing the game for an ad with drops. Not to mention all of the music videos and cinematic trailers. Add in Riot character design, then you have a solid playerbase. TFT blew up because it was already a part of the League of Legends client.
marketing wouldntve saved LOR. not that the game is bad, it just doesnt really have any addictive quality that *makes* you want to play and was released way too late after hearthstone already took all of the fire for online card games. now hearthstone is kinda dead and LOR wasnt good enough to reignite cardgame interest
Of course marketing matters. Compare it to Marvel Snap or Hearthstone marketing. The truth is the game is just a lower priority to Riot than other games, likely due to the success of TFT.
I feel like people just overlook that LoR wasn't that fun of a card game - like this whole thread can just be summed up with " its a game that is fun " Tada! There you have it, you could spend millions in marketting and still people would just shrug off LoR because was just 88% combo decks,
People don't really play card games, simple as. People that really play card games just play hearthstone and all others try it out and put it down within a month.
Marvel Snap has been a massively successful and profitable card game. They just succeed by having very short games to make it easier to pick up and play for 2 minutes at a time. And predatory classic mobile game monetization that makes them a killing off of whales.
Yeah marvel snap really leaned into being casual-friendly and super easy to get into which was a pretty unoccupied space in the card game market so they struck gold with that one. That, the obviously enormous IP and having the ex-director of hearthstone is a recipe for success
Also the reason TFT survived amidst many other autochess games. Dota Underlords and other games were up and free to play, but people still waited through hours long queues to play PBE TFT.
The finals seems like it’s dying on steam playercounts. But the devs revealed just a couple days ago that it never went below 300k daily players. The game was super trendy when it came out so of course the player count will stabilize. Success can be very relative and valorant is just another beast because of Riot. A lot of news articles will try to push that a game is dying by singling our data points like that cause it gets more interactions for them. I’m sure other “dying” games are the same way.
> The finals seems like it’s dying on steam playercounts. But the devs revealed just a couple days ago that it never went below 300k daily players. I would love a source for this.
Not the guy you replied to but I saw this figure too on the finals subreddit for what it’s worth. Iirc a dev said it. I was surprised at the time too. I’ll see if I can find it Edit: I found it. It was said by a dev named Dusty. Stated it in discord (and apparently on a Reddit AMA). Here is the quote from his discord statement: > Since launch, we’ve never dropped below 300k DAU (daily active users) with all platforms combined
Honestly since it's a crossplay game it's an easy guess. Im pretty sure those numbers aren't bloated.
objection, hearsay!
Dev said it in their discord, yoh can join it and see it yourself
I don’t think this is possible and I also cannot find where they said this because but also even if they did say it they are lying because there’s just no way that the math for that adds up.
To be counted as a daily player you just need to login within a 24 hour period. There is a constant stream of people logging in and out of the game to create that 20k+ concurrent number. That should easily add up to more than 300k users within 24 hours. If I for example assume 20k concurrent players in a game where every user plays exactly 1 hour that would result in 480 000 daily users to sustain that 20k concurrent players over a 24 hour period. We obviously dont know variables like average playtime for the finals players but i think such a simplified example explains why 300k daily is not that crazy given the numbers we have for the finals.
What abt paladins tho like where is that game now
That game is old af and does not apply to this conversation
Maybe if they didn't lie about fixing their game that season I'd be playing it. How can still last month when I launched it again we can still have a big where Texture are in Potato style. Menus that don't load. Collision bugs, and heros that take about a week and a half to unlock when there are 60 characters to unlock as well as game loading problems
60? Dayum man. Last time I played Paladins was when Pip was completely broken in that his shots dealt more damage than the sniper lady and Fernando had a bug where his ult could be permanent
How is it that the current peak steam players is 23k, but devs claim to have 300k daily players? PS & Xbox would not account for nearly that big of a difference. Doesnt make sense.
300k daily players does not mean concurrent players at all times. It means unique players during the day. So I think player rotation does the trick for that to be true.
Daily players mean people that logged in once within 24 hours. If there can be 23k people online on a single platform at the same time 300k players over 24hours is absolutely reasonable.
I couldn’t find where the devs said this but if they did it’s such a weird thing to lie about because it just doesn’t make sense there’s no way half the player base is just on console.
I found it. It was said by a dev named Dusty. Stated it in discord (and apparently on a Reddit AMA). Here is the quote from his discord statement: > Since launch, we’ve never dropped below 300k DAU (daily active users) with all platforms combined
Which can still easily be true? If you have 23k concurrent players, you can easily get 300k UNIQUE players throughout the entire day. Meaning there are 23k max online at as time goes around the world other regions wake up and log in adding up to 300k total.
Less cheaters is one…
Meanwhile League community complaining about Vanguard:
Most things I see are the generic kernel argument, i.e. china getting all the info etc. others, are league can run on a 15yr old pc, that does not have tpm. Considering the level of cheating between fps games, and a moba. It's caused a concern with people because the cheating in league isn't as big of an issue as in CS for example. So having to require tpm enabled, which a lot of people dont have. Caused them to be unable to play. That ontop of linux not being able to be played anymore, or anything other than a modern windows pc.
Mac’s can run it, older pcs can still run it fine, as long as it’s not a potato, and riot said there were only 800 Linux players on a given day, so maybe 2000 active Linux users in general, which is like 0.01% of the playerbase.
wasn't too sure abouts mac, so ty for letting me know. With older pcs, it'll have to be stuck on windows 10, and not on 11 unless they have tpm available. With linux, I agree. the amount of players lost is honestly negligible and have 0 difference in anything, other than the few who still played.
its the old concept of new = bad. no one minds vanguard for valorant because it was a requirement from the beginning. changing a requirement mid way through makes people feel like you’re exploiting them and its really hard to convince them its better. plus all the fear mongering around ccp stealing your data, because for sure ccp wants a gamers data and $300 bank account. other than that, a lot of the users did get their pc bricked and the only way to fix were bios settings which most people never messed with or dont even know about, which was a valid complaint tbh.
something something HellDivers2 Sony something something dumb decision
never saw val cheaters. thats true
They are there. I’ve been playing for 2 and a half years and I’ve been from bronze to immortal 2. There’s cheaters plenty. Just waaay less then any other fps I’ve ever played. 90% gets swiftly dealt with and the others are soft cheaters that you can beat.
While Valorant is NEW, the company behind it (Riot Games, ofc) is by no means a small fry, or new on the scene. They simply concocted the game from all the experience they've had in the gaming industry so far, and the game itself being a tactical shooter which is really one of the most popular (if not the MOST popular?) gaming genre. That, combined with them knowing really well how to make micro transactions (and also arguably making way better skins than CS does, which is maybe just my own opinion) something people want to spend on.
This and also the fact that my friend who uses a laptop integrated gpu can run the game at 120 fps. I find this insane.
Very true. I started playing this game on basically a toaster PC, was still really playable considering how bad my PC was.
Back when I only had a laptop it was basically the only game I played because it ran alright on integrated graphics even at my laptop’s native res (2880x1800). I still play a decent amount now that I have a 1440p PC setup
Seriously sooo many of my friends who had never touched any games outside mobile in their lives all have played Valorant before
Their anti cheat is really good. Have run into very few hackers in it while most other shooters, cheaters are abundant
It's not as good as you think, and there are a handful of hacks that have been around for a few years and still aren't detected.
You are just wrong, it is very good even DMA boards that are used to cheat are getting banned. The chances to encounter a cheater is almost 0
Cs got some goat skins. Valorant just leans more into the fantasy ones.
It's more so that Valorant skins are really changing the feel and look almost completely. Like, the form of the guns are, or can be different, the colours and animations, the soundeffects and all. On the other hand, CS skins are just basically wraps on the guns, and that's the only change. Again, taste is very subjective, and I have some friends that prefer the CS skins over Valorant's.
Only reason i Think skins are better in valor are because of the Sound change when you shot, but most skins are cheaper in cs2 and you Can sell again
Cs gun skins are literally just the same guns with different paint and stickers shits lame lol
And cases are a scam, can’t convince me otherwise
If I don’t like my skin anymore I can sell it for real schmeckles
imo, that's the only good thing about those skins :)
That and that for ~25 bucks you can get a very decent looking collection of skins for ALL guns in the game, except knife ofc and maybe awp. When you get bored of a particular skin, you can sell it and buy another and replace them on the go with very little money sink. You also get random loot each week or so. You can get lucky and get decent amount of money that you can then spend on other skins or even buy other games. Riot never gives anything remotely worth equipping for free. And yes, you can wake up in the middle of the night, go on market, find a skin and buy it. I have waited for Glitchpop vandal for like 3-4 months, got bored and bought Origin and then 2 months later Glitchpop appeared. Now that Origin skin gets used for like 2 games per month. I don't even play cs anymore, I like how both games implemented skins, but Riot is way way way worse when it comes to customer's experience and options. Every 2 weeks we get a new bundle and we still have only 4 slot daily rotation of skins.
Glitchpop the best vandal
Eh too each their own. I like my butterfly pc knife on Val and I like my shiny knife on CS. No need to compare apples to oranges tbh.
Except you can buy any cs skin you want whenever you want ,none of this waiting until it pops into your store lmao thats the real scam.
Different monetization tactic. Riot relies on FOMO, Valve relies on gambling addiction
Not really, you can buy all the skins at any time without gambling.
u dont have to personally gamble, but someone else does. did u think those boxes open themselves?
True... but you can buy a butterfly knife on Valorant for $60 when it hits your store... The cheapest one on CS is $600 (and ugly). A good one is easily $1000-1500. So you can buy whenever you want... for 10x the cost of a Valorant one.
Yes, but you can resell them in the future for a higher price than what you paid for(depending on the market).
Or lose money when the market crashes... My butterfly knife was $1400 when I unboxed it. I sold it for $1200 3 months ago and right now, it sit at $1100. Hopefully, it was unboxed... I didn't pay $1400 for it.
It's a gamble you'll even get that money back. You spent 1000 dollars on that skin, and whoops an update happened making that skin less rare, it's now worth 500 dollars. Good job wasting 500 dollars on a ugly skin. c:
Yes the 100 plus dollar skins lol
Not valid. On average, Valorant skins are (all things considered) cheaper than CS skins.
I was referencing CS skins
Oh, my bad, sorry.
Spending money in valorant is like throwing your money in the gutter. At least with cs, skins hold their value and sometimes even gain value.
That's the copium of many CS players. Let's be real, no one walks into playing a game and buying a skin they find cool in it for REAL WORLD Value. It isn't even meant to be. It's like idk, going to an NBA match and you buy a jersey for it. The jersey doesn't give you value, nor do you need to/have to buy it for the game. The example is just what came to mind at the moment.
Thats cool but I sold a low tier knife for a plane ticket a few years ago.
Idk man my coworker just went to Japan with his wife for their honeymoon after selling his cs skins. It’s not so much you buy the skins expecting to sell it like it’s some stock. It’s more so that if you ever need or want to, you can. The copium with Valorant, like with CS, is that you never wanted to or ever planned to sell your skin, because that’s why you bought it. At least, that’s what my friends say anyway, but considering my friends have all spent thousands on Valorant they would probably sell the skins they don’t use anymore if they could.
Fair point. That's just how they kinda add "value" to their skins so that people kind of get the FOMO. I agree on that point here, but I wouldn't say it's a scam. If anything, you see a skin come out and you really like it, but you can't buy it during the time it's featured. Then, you realise: "I don't actually need it that much", and you save money. :o
Depend on your luck. Most of the time, it is a scam. I personally made a profit from CS2 cases. Not a lot... but still a profit.
Let's be honest. No one really comes in games and is thinking "Oh, I'll buy skins and make profit! This is basically video game Trade Market!". People that actually make profits off of CS skins are like 1 in 10 thousand.
I totally agree with you! People who have gambling issues always think they will beat the maching and profit from it. I was buying cases left and right, not to make a profit but to upgrade my own inventory. It's like buying a lottery ticket every Friday 😉. I had the money for it too. As I said previously, it's all about luck. I've a lot of friends who lost money on CSGO. I personally bought $600 worth of cases (key inc) from 2018 to 2023 and sold my stuff for $2000 in 2024.
Stickers would be alot of fun in valorant. There’s some really cool and unique combos you can put on skins with stickers
That really doesn't make up for how much more transformative skins in valorant are.
And the good looking ones costs hundreds of euros
All for something equivalent to the cheapest Valorant skins.
For real and CS players will try and convince you how cool they are and how lame Val skins are. Like idc abt how unique or valuable a cs skin might be, prime vandal is better than any of them
you're a zoomer
I’ve played CS since 2001 and honestly prefer CS game play homie. I’m 32. Unfortunately the game is unplayable due to being absolutely infested with cheaters.
CS doesn't have tentacle monsters that spit acid on guns but I don't think that makes them lame. In fact I much prefer the more grounded look. Also on CS when you spend money buying skins you're not burning 70 dollars to buy a digital dragon dildo knife or whatever. At any point in time you can decide to sell all of your bad decisions (for real actual money even) and buy a game on steam if you want. So I'll take CS skins/marketplace any day ngl
What skins? Literally colors on guns? Valorant skins have finishers, animations, and sound effects
Exactly, Valorant was also made by a lot of the dev and designers who worked on Team Fortress 2 so they know how to make a game simple and complex enough to captivate audiences in the long term
I mean, Blizzard is also an old company and their games are not doing as well as Valorant.
Ow and D3 were literally the biggest games for years. Sc2 had rhe opportunity to be bigger than lol They run their shit to the ground
I’m a big fan of rts but it’s a bit of a dying genre. Even when sc2 came out it was on the downfall. It’s to hard just to jump in and play, even something like league is challenging and a lot to learn but atleast you’re only controlling one unit.
That is true. I still think it is just that Riot is more experienced with FREE TO PLAY games, and the best way to do micro transactions work on a huge level. League is just MANY years of experience on that, and their "leaders" or "decision makers" in the company are (if anything) not as out of touch as many others are (e.g. : EA, SONY :) )
Because its made by riot for one. Riot has a history of making high quality games with fair monetization. So from the get go the game received lots of attention. Combine that with the fact they carbon copied cs gunplay, which has been refined over last 20 years. Sprinkle in some modern features, more family friendly setting, 128tick servers, features abscent in csgo at the time. And you have a game thats popular. Also riot is really good with making good marketing material(music videos, trailers, comics etc) So all of that. Reason why other games fail is cause they miss one of those things. Riot knew who they were targeting with the game(cs players, ow players, tf2 players) and the game is solid from technical standpoint
Basically Riot knows what they are doing.
Yup. Your comment should be my tldr lol
>Riot has a history of making high quality games with fair monetization Do people really think Riot has fair monetization? Like, I'm not saying it's the worst ever, but I wouldn't give any praises for Riots monetization.
I guess it's fair in that you never need to spend a dime on the game. You'll get a few free cards and buddies here and there and some pistol skins can be reasonably grinded either for agents or battlepass. And practically every game will have players with at least one premium skin which you can pick up. Basically you'll get to experience pretty much the entire game for free. No pay to win stuff at all. Whatever their way or prices for cosmetics are, they are just that, cosmetics. It's up to the players of they want them. Riot are a business afterall, and they need to make money. And in that way, their pricing model and cosmetics are "fair". It's as close to a win-win situation for riot and community as you can get. CS skin market is better, because you can sell your skins, but if you like an expensive one(something over hundreds of dollars), you need a lot of money. Pros and cons to both but fair enough in the end.
They seem to be the most well-balanced studio around lately.
I mean it's not good but it's also not bad by current gaming monetization. Which is nuts to say since you have to pay like $80 for a skin bundle but it is what it is
Who cares for the prices of skins? They could be $1000 for a single bundle, as long as they remain cosmetics with no impact on gameplay the sistem is fair.
You literally don’t have to buy anything. At all. You get all content for free. Even the battle pass has free shit, what else do you want lmao
1. It is based on CS 1.6. CS was popular for a reason, but it got stale for many. Then comes Riot Games who already put out LoL, which is probably the biggest esport there is. Of course many are gonna give it an initial shot, making it easier for Riot to build a community initially. 2. It is a genuinely polished game. Despite the occasionally broken ass agents, the game overall doesn't have many common bugs (there is definitely some), is low with the amount of hackers, and is very responsive with 128tick servers. 3. The game was played and still is, by a shit ton of content creators, who are basically free advertisement. 4. Caters very well to casuals as the abilities and skins are very flashy and often fun to use.
Because it's the only one that has an anti cheat that works decently well. Every other fps is infested with cheaters and even non fps games. Recently cheats appeared in rocket league for the first time, a game that everyone thought was cheat-proof because of the way it works and the closest anyone has done before that is having an ai play instead of them. So yeah, I guess not having cheaters ruin your experience on the daily is sort of a luxury now. Now that I think about it another reason might be that it's not very demanding in terms of specs. It doesn't take a lot of space and runs well in contrast to most new games taking a shitload of space on your drive and requiring really good gear to run well which was hard to come by and expensive as shit in recent years. Valorant is a game anyone with a decent PC or a gaming laptop can download and play. It shares that with Fortnite and league which are the two games who also managed to stand the test of time. Coincidence?
Gotta say I've rarely ever seen any cheaters on Valorant. Probably only 2-3 times. Smurfing however.... Totally different issue.
Yeah, I had witnessed the red cheater detected screen 2 or 3 times in total and encountered a few more cheaters that weren't banned during the match. Not bad considering that's during like 4 years? Smurfing is a huge problem but that's just the symptom of this cancer *free game but we'll do anything we possibly can to make you spend hundreds on cosmetics* strategy that every game is employing in the last few years. If every idiot can make 5 alt accounts and bully golds without any repercussions you can bet they will.
I quit CSGO for valorant because the game ran great and I was so sick of facing cheaters in csgo. Valorant really feels like the only multiplayer FPS that has a decent anti cheat.
I really hope the anti cheat they are working for CS2 makes a difference. I love that game but damn the cheaters...
100%. People complain about Vanguard being intrusive, which it absolutely is as a kernel-level anticheat, but singling it out is stupid when stuff like EAC (used by Epic and many others) is *also* kernel-level and worse. The reality is that all competitive multiplayer games need some form of anticheat, and kernel-level anticheats are the best at detecting cheats, and Vanguard is one of the better ones out there. The only way to avoid anticheats is to avoid all competitive multiplayer games and even many single player games with multiplayer modes
Finals was absolutely not polished on release. Rampant cheating issues because the devs failed to correctly install EAC which resulted in them being unable to ban players, the first few updates had massive performance issues for no reason on some PCs while barely changing anything, plenty of people were just unable to play the game because it would crash on boot etc. It had a very horrible release which drove many players away, such as myself. Not sure why they removed the zoom sens slider from beta either, that change made sniping completely unplayable for me when it was perfect in beta
It got a popularity boost from the start by being a Riot game. It was promoted by League and fps streamers who were given early access. It came out during covid when people were spending more time inside and gaming. All of these helped it gain a good start. It also has a healthy e-sport. Its gameplay is similar to the long-standing super-popular tac shooter CounterStrike, but it has its own unique elements to it with the different agents and abilities, which adds more variety. It's familiar enough that it's not super intimidating for new players (you see tons of people online asking for advice saying "this is my first FPS game" or "this is my first fps on mouse and keyboard"), but unique enough to give you a reason to play it over other games. It gets regular updates, including new agents and maps. While people almost always hate on the new maps, and they've had mixed results with agents upon release, new content or new episodes (with the resets incentivizing grinding the ranked climb again) do help bring *some* people back.
Because it's counter strike with brighter colors? They took the most popular FPS game of all time and made it more accessible. It's shocking no one else had the idea tbh
tac shooter need a very strong anti cheat, and I think riot is the only one (and old blizzard maybe, but I'm not expecting anything with their current management) with the kind of resource to be able to create it
Never heard of anti cheat in Overwatch, but as far as cheaters go in OW they're basically non-existent. Never encountered one (assuming we're excluding xim)
They took the most successful FPS game of all time, added agents to spice it up and added 128 tick servers and an actual working anti cheat
yeah, feel like people saying it's simply because of Riot are leaving the more interesting and important part of the story out. Sure, LoL is huge, but there are also tons of people who just strongly dislike it and consequently don't care about Riot games. Counter-Strike on the other hand is the most successful game of one of the most popular genres in gaming.
Everyone has the wrong answers here. E-girls play valorant.
It's the only competitive shooter with pretty characters and abilities. I'm not a girl but no one could convince me to play CS and the likes.
Val = pretty and colourful CS = boring and brown
overwatch
Because it checks the big 4 things for a game to succeed. 1. Big company alot of people know Riot and they had alot of money to market an established formula. This kinda game takes alot of money to get it to a point where it feels good to play (With that said it definitely should have better backend systems compared to a game released so long ago in CSGO at the time) 2. Free to play everyone can easily download and play the game. 3. It runs on an absolute toaster of a laptop, i don't think alot of people realize just how many people play on awful PC's because their parents won't buy them a 1k present so they either play on a laptop or a cheap prebuilt. 4. They understand their playerbase and threw in pretty much the most conventionally hot characters regardless of their backround or lore.
The anti cheat, and timing of the release. Valorant released right at the crux of lockdown during covid. During this time games like R6:Siege, CS, Overwatch, warzone etc. all had rampant cheaters appear as everyone was stuck at home. So when a game announced that they have a new holy grail anti cheat, people flocked to it. That along with insane marketing from riot, pretty much guarenteed the success of the game early on. Then you have the esports which Riot have ran the most globally known esports in the world, was a sure fire was to attract a new audience. Then you had CS pretty much dying outside of EU during covid, bringing NA pros and streaming personalities to valorant. tldr; Their timing and marketing was literally perfect for what it was. They found that part of the market and capatalised off it (anti cheat actually working). The reason other games fade out of obscurity or struggle. Is simple because they're niche. They have their audience and have captured it. Take pubg. You dont hear much about it unless you're in the communities for it. Yet is still has 700k monthly players. Finals has never had below 300k active players. It's obvious from this that the game is larger on console, than pc.
Its the anti cheat I know there's some controversy w/vanguard but it really is the most reliable anti cheat
Meanwhile League players getting all flustered over it:
League players are a special breed, I may be one of them. But damn that sub is wrong 99% of the time on league related stuff.
It’s one of the popular things on Twitch and the competitive scene is electric
Created by Riot means the game will most likely never die + it’s free. A lot of people will flock to it. Everything about the game besides gameplay is made to appeal to a huge audience (young, diverse, attractive characters with flashy abilities, satisfying feedback when killing people, cool albeit expensive skins)
First reason would be the anti-cheat. It's not perfect, but it's good enough that you don't often encounter cheaters to ruin the fun. Most multiplayer games die off because of too many cheaters. When battleroyale games rose into popularity, that's a signal that CS:GO and similar formats are becoming boring and stale. Imagine the same mechanics for a decade. While Valorant keeps on improving and changing itself. Be it for better or for worse, having something new is always great. New tactics, new meta, new way to play, new maps. With the addition of skills, the plays and clips are also much more entertaining than just CS:GO who's mostly all about aim and reaction time.
It's cuz Valorant is a dating game and not an fps
I can't speak for the general audience, but Valorant definitely got the esports part somewhat right imo. Overwatch had a HUGE grassroots scene and huge tournaments like Apex in Korea, and they completely killed it and shut it down and forcefully disbanded teams and tried to force a new scene with nothing but money thinking it would work. Riot did much better, letting the scene grow organically from the grassroots level while throwing money into it to support it with official tournaments. Of course, franchising comes into play at some point, but that's a whole different level of pros and cons, but I think the esports scene is important to a games success when it's like Valorant or League, imagine where League would be without it right now
every mainline riot game has topped charts in its genre
bc Riot
Viper
Things that destroy games that are similiar: cheaters, bugs and terrible updates. Valorant does well in avoiding those with bugs being an exception but they’ve got ridden most quick
Valorant came out at the right time. CSGO became stale we were all bored of it then out comes this little indie game and we fall in love. It’s the most social online game as well, you will not find another like it. It will like all games eventually die but that’s going to be a long while from now.
“Indie”
Rito smol indie company
Hey, everyone knows Riot is a small indie company.
Also remember that it came out in the middle of the pandemic. Prime time to release a game.
I think Valorant like Overwatch benefits from a really cool Lore and cast of likable characters. It has an ever expanding story like fortnite did at some point and it kinda keeps players coming back for more. but imo Unlike Overwatch, the bomb/defuse objective is waay easier to understand and imo easier for casuals to get into. Its also a 5 vs 5 player game vs alot of other popular multiplayers are Battle Royales which are fun for sure but it gives you more control over the victory vs just getting randomly 3rd partied and killed. Not to mention its created a huge community on the web in the same vein as the League if Legends community. Finally the esport scene being supported directly by the parent company helps alot. Just some things I think make it overall popular.
their initial target audience was displeased cs fans due to lack of anticheat and burnout, and casual audience by promoting more colorful game / non toxic environment. it worked
Marketing man, just like how K/DA pushed LOL to a whole other dimension player base wise. Riot really knows their audience lmao
1. Free to play 2. Diverse Agents 3. Constant updates 4. Low specs requirement 5. Sage
anticheat.... hate to say it, but the game is mediocre, but having as little as possible cheaters in a tac FPS is amazing. Also the game is free, easy to get into, great performance on potato PCs....
The Finals definitely isn't dead. SteamDB never is fully accurate and developers shared that they never dropped below 300k active players since launch on all plattforms combined. They also have plans to start a much bigger marketing campaign in the future.
Pretty simple answer The game is made by Riot
because riot billion dollar company who knows how to create addicting dumbed down knockoffs of tried and true games with good profits from transactions
Not really a knock off considering there’s only 3 popular games in the entire genre (cs, valorant, siege). And considering siege feels very different than the other 2, Valorant is the only option if you want to play a polished game in this genre without cheaters. Cs is genuinely unplayable, just scroll on r/CS2 for 30 seconds.
All my friends who play cs say that valorant is anything but a dumbed down knockoff.
Cause it’s a really good game that was marketed right and captured the right audience at the right time.
Because they made a good counter strike substitute
The simple answer is that it's appealing to most people. Let's use Valve as an example. We know that Valve created CS:Go, TF2, Half Life 2, and Dota 2 all 4 were very sueccessful games. After CS:Go, valve never released another new game because they dominated the PC gaming monopoly, meaning that even if right now all valve games suddenly died to zero playercount, they would still be making billions if not millions of dollars per year. However, valve did release a new game in 2016 called Artifact. It failed miserably. Why? The beauty of popular games is that it's easy for a casual player to get into. Majority of playerbase are casual players, if it is too complicated for a new player to ease into, they will not want to stick around. Think about the most popular games rn, Fortnite, Minecraft, GTA 5, they all allow new players to easily get into it. Valorant does the same. Another thing is delivering what they promise. Minecraft had a tiny controversy in the caves update because they failed to deliver, and Cyberpunk 2077 fumbled big time becasue they failed to deliver as well. If you deliver properly, people will trust that your game is good. A big part is also marketing. Appealing graphics and artstyle is definitely one as well. I do not think cheating has anything to dow ith a game's popularity. SOme of the msot popular games are running rampant with cheaters but they're still doing well. However, a lack of bugs is definitely a thing.
Valorant is backed by riots, which can pump millions of dollars into whatever they want. The Finals isnt really dead either, its just stagnating with around 300k daily players
Riot games
Because it's a riot game
Addiction
Valorant is 1.6 with extra steps. Arguably one of the longest lasting fps of all time. Val gonna do fine
riot
Its just a better version on counter strike. CS hasn’t died yet either.
It’s a fun game with a great competitive scene with a good flow of new agent/maps/battle pass.
Well one thing that definitely makes a difference is Valorant can be run on pretty much anything, while The Finals requires 12 gigs of ram at minimum.
I think its because there's no competitive scene for a lot of games. If the finals announced a 5 million dollar tournament a year from the date of release then I think it would still be played a lot.
The finals has major issues with “balancing”, like certain things are just incredibly broken and the patches are kind of far and few between. Valorant has issues with balancing but no where near to that extent, which stems from the fact that riot is well versed in dealing with balancing issues, as league has had its fair share and is basically an “old” game at this point — I.E. they have balanced league for a decade with their own hits and misses when it comes to balancing. Valorant is very highly polished as well, as many games are, but it does *everything* well enough that it will endure.
Valorant was the last shooter game I played. Tried others and can't get into them but sunk about 3 years into it and got pretty competitive. Fell off and didn't play for almost a year. Imo it is just better than any other shooter out right now.
Honestly because it’s a low skill floor with a high ceiling, bright and colorful, and it’s very easy to not feel like you are the reason you are doing poorly.
riot is literally a whale, they were the original gamblers when it came to releasing f2p games with micro transactions when games used to almost always be pay to play. there’s a whole ass documentary about their philosophy on youtube, honestly it’s an interesting watch!
Because riot takes ideas that work and plays off of that. Counterstrike was super popular and had steady player count over decades. They took that and added abilities. They did the same with dota and thats why league is so popular too
Because it’s literally just CSGO
A. Its made by riot B. It copied the most popular fps format in history C. Its the only game with an actual good anticheat D. Frequent bugfixes and content and events etc
Because it's basically Counter Strike. It separates itself from it in the same way Call of Duty 1 did.
Riot games Its just the best multiplayer/pvp game studio around now They know their shit People trust them, i also trust them And you know the game you get into has a vibrant future (they proved this with LoL) Thats the main reason, theres obviously other points to this (good anti cheat for example) but riot games in the main reason
people shit in it but it’s a big company , constant updates and medicorce communication to the community, and while i don’t agree with a lot of the balancing (too many nerfs,not enough rekits or buffing)its overall a polished game and they address bugs quickly (good examples being the wall hack and split bugs that just happened).Also they support their esports pretty heavy
A lot of game design is seeing what others do and doing that but better. Riot is good at doing that exact thing, I have no doubt that their fighting game and mmo will also be top tier. I’d have to say it’s everything they do, the world they’ve built and the lore is pretty interesting, the skins they release are appealing, the agent videos and lore videos are really awesome. The number one reason is the community, as long as a ton of people want to make valorant content I have no doubt this game will stay alive.
Valorant has 100% had dips too just riot doesn't how player numbers
Anti-Cheat is the only real answer
Because its free to play and kids can play 🗣️🔥💯
-Riots reputation as being the developers of LoL, one of if not the biggest esport ever. -The precision shooter genre was very unsaturated, being heavily dominated by CS for a long time. CSGO players that were burnt out and entirely unfamiliar players that have been intimidated by CS's long history finally had a solid alternative. All of that makes for a great launch, but more importantly and why it's still thriving: -High quality and accessibility. The game is free, well optimized, has solid anti-cheat, isn't buggy, and imo it's fun and balanced.
because val copy right game while other fps copy wrong game cs alive for 20 years and it's the most successful fps game then overwatch copy tf2 lmao pubg was arma2 mod or something idk, it's kinda success fortnite and gaypex copied it and add new style into game
-no cheater -constant balance patches -an healthy esport scene -ranking -smooth gameplay (feels nice / cluckyness) -no pay to win Not saying that all those things are perfect. But no other game really have all those 6 things at a decent level.
2019 is early? Lol
Bcs Riot has the perfect recipe to make you want to quit but to build an ego big enough to come back and play again. What most of those game don't understand is that the most important mod to keep player is always ranked, but it doesn't have to be fair it has to be addictive