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Riot’s new game Valorant is already breaking Fortnite’s recordsIt’s in closed beta now
It’s in closed beta now
There are currently 1.7 million people watchingValoranton Twitch, which means it’s matched the game streaming platform’s all-time record for the number of people watching a single game at the same time. That’s not bad when you consider the previous record holder was Fortnite, a global phenomenon, andValoranthas only just entered closed beta. Maybe people are watching because they’re excited for a new game from the makers of League Of Legends, or because they’re excited for a first-person shooter following in Counter-Strike’s footsteps. Or maybe it’s because watching Twitch streams is how you get a key to enter the beta.
If you’re interested in getting into the beta, you need tosign up or login to your Riot account, link it to your Twitch account, and thenstart watching any stream of the game with the ‘Drops Enabled’ tag. You’ll then have a chance of receiving a randomly dropped key to access the closed beta.
This is a clever way of getting a lot of people to watch streams of your game, and to get a lot of livestreamers to start broadcasting it. Still, folks wouldn’t be watching the game in their droves if they weren’t interested in playing it for themselves. I’ve seen other games do similar key giveaways with a lot less success.
Watch on YouTube
Watch on YouTube
Unfortunately, getting a key is currently no guarantee of getting access. This is a beta designed in part to reveal bugs, and there’s reports of server problems, anticheat errors booting people at launch, and a growing list of other issueson the game’s Reddit megathread. Personally, I can’t even get it to install - I’ve got access, have downloaded the installer, but it doesn’t do anything when I press the shiny ‘Install’ button. Hmm.
We’ll have more to say on the game just as soon as we can get it working. If you’re playing it yourself, check out Ollie’sValorant weapons guidefor great advice on how to shoot heads faster.
